Rating: PG13 (language)

Disclaimer: Not mine, but a girl can dream…

Author's Notes: Takes place right after Skin and Bones – the whole Nasedo, bloody handprint thing didn’t happen.

***

That had been…bad…That whole thing reminded me of why I had stayed away…

"I miss you…"

I miss her too and she knows it. She’s clinging to it and I don’t know how to make her stop.

If I was honest with myself I’d admit that I don’t want her to. I'd admit to myself that I don’t want her to give up on me.

Honesty is overrated.

And so is love.

I love her and I hurt her. She loves me and I hurt her. I can’t handle it, and I don’t want to. I not only have to be alone I wantto be alone.

I need to be alone.

I can’t be around her cuz if I’m around her I'll crack. One breath of her hair, one accidental touch handing her a plate, one moment of looking into her eyes or at her lips or her hands, remembering what they used to do to me, what I used to do to them, and it’ll all be over.

I knew that four months ago.

I knew that I needed to have time away so I could build up a resistance to her. Because she was my drug. Because I shook all night without her, felt sick without her…

But I didn’t want to see her. I couldn’t. I needed to get over it.

I took a "leave of absence" over the summer from the Crashdown. Tess had encouraged it – she encouraged me. She tried to help me with my powers. She understands that about me…that I need to know…

She convinced me to leave my job so she could help train me. She also helped me pay for four months rent while I was "without funds". I didn’t like it and she knew it, but I hadn’t been ready to go back to the Crashdown, so it had been either let Tess pay my bills so I could practice my powers and maybe save my life and the lives of my people, or be confronted during the lunch and dinner shifts by Maria demanding to know why I wasn’t picking up the phone.

She had caught me once. She had suckered Max into revealing our "phone code". I had chewed him out for that one and I think Tess did too. She knew it had upset me.

I didn’t like that either – Tess thinking she knew me, Tess worrying about me.

I don’t hate her. I don’t anything her. She’s my teacher. And until next week when I start flipping burgers again she owns my ass…

She’s comfortable with the situation. Too comfortable. She walks in when she feels like it, doesn’t knock, and I'd like to say it pisses me off but I can’t. I’m used to being barged in on. The first time anyone knocked on my door I stood there for like five minutes wondering where the fuck that noise was coming from.

Maria knocks.

I’m surprised she didn’t come by this summer instead of running up her phone bill leaving ten-minute messages on my machine every day. I guess pretending I’m not home and leaving a message is better than standing outside my door listening to me pace back and forth knowingwithout a doubt I amhome and not answering.

I’m a dick.

I shouldn’t have told her I love her. That’s why she won’t let this go. I should have just walked away and not said a damn thing.

See where honesty gets you? It gets you guilt and a whole bunch of other human feelings that make me sick to my stomach.

Sometimes I wish I could be like Tess. She knows who she is, what she should feel. She’s not distracted by all that human crap. She has power. She knows what she has to do and she does it. Yeah I felt bad for Liz. Kinda. But Tess was just trying to get in, to prove she had a place with us.

Well that and she thinks she loves Max.

Maybe she does, we’ve never talked about it. We’ve never talked about anything.She tells me what to blow up and I do it. She tells me when to focus, where to draw my power from and I do it. Listening to her isn’t as bad as listening to Max. Tess tells me how to do things she knows I want to do. Max just tells me to do things, or not to do things, period.

He’s always been like that though…except lately it’s been pissing me off. A lot. Because now he thinks it’s in his job description to boss me around and he does it without asking. See, he used to ask me not to be an idiot. Now he tellsme. Believe me it makes all the friggin difference. This new way makes me want to tell him to fuck off just for the hell of it.

He doesn’t approve of what I’m doing…preparing, gathering my strength, learning to focus my energy.

I think he just doesn’t approve of Tess.

I don’t think he considers her a part of the group. And it’s not because she came later on - it’s because of the whole Liz thing. He can’t keep it separate. He blames her for her leaving and he’s too stupid to realize Liz did him a favor.

She got out of his way.

And he’s been running after her all summer.

He couldn’t get to Florida so he went to Maria.

He hasn’t talked to me about her.

That’s the only thing he’s been doing right.

He has her on his side with the whole "Evil Tess" thing – Maria’s like a one-woman barrier between him and Tess. She comes in, Max looks to Maria for help and she’s there asking Tess if she’d like her order "to go" with a sickly sweet voice and a Deluca-Death-Look. It works every time.

I don’t feel bad for Tess. I can understand why she did what she did, but if you want to get close to Max you don’t…fuck with his head. If she really knew him as well as she thought she did she would have known that.

She comes here a lot. Even when she’s not in the mood to help me figure out what the hell to do with myself and my new position as Han Solo to Max’s Luke Skywalker. She just comes in and sits on my couch and watches my TV. She doesn’t bitch if I have a hockey game on. She doesn’t ask me questions about what they’re doing, why they keep ramming into each other and what all the "arcs and squiggle thingys" are on the ice. She watches. Quietly.

I wanna say it’s a nice change, but then I think about what I used to do to get Maria to shut up…

And now we’re heading into dangerous territory.

Like this evening…

I was really stupid this evening.

I didn’t go home right away. I stayed and I watched her dance. Because I wanted to prove to myself that I could handle it.

Like I said I was really stupid.

I watched her dance, I watched her move. And I remembered what it felt like when she used to move against me, beneath me.

Instead of going home I sat there on the counter pretending not to look at her, inwardly screaming "Verboten!" to my heart. And my pants.

She looked over at me, sucked her bottom lip into her mouth, tilted back her head, her hair falling off her bare shoulders and…and that’s when I left. It was either leave or pick her up, throw her over my shoulder Neanderthal-style and melt the break room door shut.

Four months have obviously not been enough time to get her out of my system.

And I start work in a week.

I’m screwed.

Tess has this thing she’s trying to teach me – it’s a way of blocking your mind against unwanted "searches". She told me it’s something Nasedo said we’d probably need in the future. I have to remember to ask her if there’s such a thing as a libido block…

Maria’s going to be working it every opportunity she gets because she knows how to turn me on.

"So…I hear ex-cons are great in bed…"

Mayday! Mayday!

So friggin screwed.

Tess comes in and sits beside me on the couch. She left the "back to school party" (as if that’s something you should celebrate) not too long after I did. She doesn’t feel comfortable hanging out with them (Max and Isabel) if I’m not there.

Max politely acknowledges her existence and that’s about it. Isabel…I don’t know how Isabel feels about her, but she’s a far cry from inviting her over for a girls-night.

She’s always looked to me though…even from the very beginning she looked for me to be on her side. She almost intuitively knew that I was the one who wanted home the most, wanted it as much as she did. It’s funny how she feels she can relate to me, the anti-social one.

I don’t say anything to her, I just scoot over to make some room. She looks like she’s trying not to cry. I can’t even tell you how uncomfortable that makes me.

Tess isn’t supposed to cry.

She’s supposed to be beyond that.

I don’t know what to do and I hope to God she holds it in. I don’t know how to comfort Tess. I don’t know if I can bring myself to hug her. I’ve only done that with Izzy. And Maria. I hand her the remote control because I don’t know what else to do.

She takes it and looks at it like she’s never seen one before, then presses her lips together and pushes the button. She flips and stops at QVC. They’re selling these puppets that look like regular stuffed animals. This woman wearing an obnoxious flower print dress holds up a panda and sticks it on her hand really carefully (like she's afraid of offending it), then makes it wave its hands at the screen.

"When I was in the orphanage before Nasedo found me there was this girl who had something like that…" She murmurs watching the children on the screen playing with the puppets. "It was a lion puppet and she loved it. No one else had a toy like that. I don’t know where she got it from. All the other girls were so jealous. She carried the damn thing with her everywhere." She sighs and closes her eyes for a moment. "It was always really cold at night. I remember being really annoyed at the girl because she’d complain about the cold while holding the stupid thing instead of sticking her hands up it’s ass to keep them warm. That’s the only time I've ever wanted something like that. And I didn’t even want it to play with. It was all about survival. Keeping my hands warm so I could wring her scrawny neck without my fingers snapping off like icicles."

"You were in an orphanage?"

"Yeah…for three years. What, you thought Nasedo was there from the beginning?"

"Yeah."

"He wasn’t. It was just me at first. I bet Max and Isabel never wanted to smack anybody. I bet they would have given that stupid girl their blankets so she’d feel better."

"Max would have. Izzy would have smacked her and then felt really bad about it."

"What would you have done?"

"I would have stolen her lion and kept warm."

She smiles.

"That’s what I did. When she’d fall asleep I'd take it for the night then give it back before she woke up…I didn’t want to get into trouble…No one liked me there either."

"I know what that’s like." I say and she nods, like she’s not surprised. She finds a basketball game for me and sets the remote down. She still looks thisclose to bursting into tears.

I’m going to tell her that it’ll be okay even though I know that that "it" has something to do with Max - in which case it probably won’t be, but the truth sucks right? I mean when was the last time the truth made someone feel better? You need to lie to yourself to keep going sometimes and I’m going to help her with that.

I open my mouth to say something hopefully comforting and the phone rings.

I don’t even think about picking it up anymore unless it’s two rings a stop and another ring a moment later. I don’t need to talk to anyone but Max and Isabel. And Tess. But she never calls – she just stops by.

"Make it brief…*beep*"

"Michael it’s me…I just um…wanted to remind you that you start next week and that you have to fill out a schedule before then. You have to give it to me or Liz…not Courtney though cuz she doesn’t know what the hell she’s doing…I’m sorry…for not making sure she was gone tonight…" sigh "I hope you realize you can’t keep avoiding me. We’re working together, we go to school together, we have the same friends…Sooner or later you’re going to have to be in a room with me for more than ten minutes without freaking out and running away. I’m not going anywhere and if you can’t deal with that then…then I don’t know. You’ll have to work it out." Pause " It sucks Michael, okay? If you don’t want to be with me anymore fine – well okay no it’s not [I]fine[/I] but…But we never even tried to be friends…and that’s the only option right now until you stop being such an idiot. So we have to be friends. Act like one and return my phone calls every once in a while okay? At least the important ones…Yeah so I'll see you later. Bye." Click.

Tess looks at me.

"What?"

"That’s the kind of focus you need if you want to blast through a mountain."

"What are you talking about…"

"She had your complete attention and it was just her voice. I could have picked up the TV and dropped it on your head and you wouldn’t have noticed."

"I know she’s a distraction." I say irritably. "I’m working on it alright?"

She's quiet for a moment, staring at the TV, then whispers, "What is it about them…"

I'm quiet too. I don’t know how to answer. She turns to me her blue eyes still wet.

"I’m serious. Why do you want her so much?"

Because she doesn’t put up with my crap – she calls me on it. Because she knows who I am, what I am and wants me anyway. Because she understands me. Because she knows how to drive me crazy, she knows how to calm me down. She’s my first kiss. She’s my first love. She’s my first everything.

Because I can’t imagine what kind of person I'd be without her. I don’t know what kind of alien I'd be either.

I just stare at her.

"Will you show me?"

I don’t know why I nod. Because she wants me too I guess and I figure she’s had enough disappointment for one night.

She reaches up and lightly touches her fingertips to my temples. It's weird having her touch me, but I don’t have a chance to think about it too much because she lets go after a moment. She turns back to the TV.

"Max feels about Liz…the way you feel about Maria."

"Yeah."

She doesn’t say anything and I watch a single tear roll down her cheek and settle in the corner of her mouth.

"I have to go…" she says. I follow her to the door. "Are you going to call her back?"

"No." She nods and turns to go after throwing over her shoulder, "I’ll help you with that Mind Block tomorrow okay?"

"Yeah." I close the door and sit back down on the couch. I press play on my answering machine and listen to Maria's message again, but turn it off before I get all the way through and erase it.

Tomorrow isn’t soon enough.

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