***********************

He lusted for her with his human body, strung out on the scent of her body spray, some orange-blossom-cherry-pheremone whatever, and was laced with urges that he didn't entirely know how to deal with. He desired her with his alien mind, needed to add her to his list of things he's seen and known that no on else ever could.

He wanted to love her, to hold her and kiss her and in every way personify the fantasy lover she imagined, but he couldn't deal with that responsibility, too frightened of being imperfect, so he settled for the barest minimum, hiking her skirt up with one hand, so roughly as so not to betray its trembling, unzipping his jeans with the other, and merging his body with hers so quickly that her muffled cry of pain could almost be construed as one of surprise, and he himself didn't get the chance to fully appreciate the miracle of slipping into her.

Pain segued in moments to bliss, and, for him, a panic in his head that he had to bite down, not to turn in the other direction and run. There was nothing he could do at this point beside rock with her, and throb where she did, and pray as hard as he could to his God not to let him see inside her completely, because then he would be fully enveloped, and lost. If she could be only physical beauty, a faceless, unidentifiable pocket to forget his keys and himself in, just for a few seconds, then he could go on and safely say he hadn't lost his edge.

She had never experienced this, this incomprehensible maelstrom of body and mind, touch and psyche, same as he hadn't, yet he wasn't the virgin she was. Every clumsy stroke, every harsh stream of light on his clenched eyes was familiar. He had seen this, visualized this the day they met. Seeing nothing but her, hearing, tasting, feeling nothing but her, her lips and fingers and body leaving him longing to stop time, to run and get a jar, to encapsulate that feeling and hand it over his bed to help him rest at night. Even as he prayed she could somehow understand his coldness, his blind refusal of her touch, he knew how it all finished up, in her fevered, sharp climax, her begging his name, any sign that he was paying attention to what he had done to her, while he simultaneously burst into a million and one small specks of nothing- his lips white and bloody where he had bitten them, to keep from crying out, to prevent him from screaming her name as he simulataneously swallowed her and turned inside out, letting the music in his ears face to silence as he couldn't manage to tell her: "Thank you. I think I love you."

Michael couldn't quite come up with anything, even as Maria pushed him off of her, pulled her skirt back down over her slim hips, and, with one final plea to beg her not to go, opened the door, went out of it, and slammed it shut, leaving him with tiny black spots over his eyes in the afterglow of the afternoon sun and her. He couldn't think. He couldn't breathe. She was gone. And he was just coming down, with a crack-on-the-head realization that maybe this time he'd lost her for good.

*********************************

Two days earlier...

****************************

Michael left around six, without saying anything to Maria, who was distracted by the large, noisy family with the six year old who kept throwing the ketchup. After what seemed like hours of polite smiling, she turned around, wondering if he was amused by her constant bending-over-and-picking-up routine, and he was gone.

Vaguely disappointed, and just a bit unnerved by his earlier comment, she double-checked her watch, saw that it really *was* quitting time, and headed to the back to hang up her apron and change. Liz was ready to relieve her, and she smiled at her best friend.

"If something wrong?" she asked.

"No" Maria said, not really as persuasive as she wanted to sound.

Liz raised her eyebrows, but didn't really get a chance to interrogate her further, since she was suited up, and besides, the Addams Family still hadn't left Table Nine.

Maria was about to head out, when something stopped her.

She knew it was none of her business.

She couldn't help it.

The old guy was still leaned over his corner table. The coffee mug she had filled so much earlier was empty, now, and the interior was stained brown from stray old grounds. Casually, she leaned on the edge of the table.

"Sir?" she murmured, turning up her innocent-little- girl expression to max capacity.

He looked up, and, at the sight of her sunnily smiling face, grinned himself.

"Haven't you left by now, missy?" he asked, friendly.

Maria groaned inwardly, but was careful not to outwardly react.

"I was just about to ask you the same thing, sir" she said, plucking at the edge of her shorts behind her back nervously.

"Oh, me?" he wondered. "Just going over some papers."

She looked interested.

"Anything I can see?" she inquired.

He laughed tentatively.

"Welllll..." he drawled uncertainly. "You look like a good girl, so I guess so, as long as you promise not to tell anyone!"

Maria's eyes went wide.

"Oh, of course not!" she swore, seriously. "I'm good at keeping secrets."

*If only he knew* she thought.

Swiftly, she kicked it out of her head.

The old man looked her levelly in the eye.

"You know that big, abandoned building at the city limits?"

"Yeah" she breathed. She went by it every day.

He leaned close, and, as repulsive as it was to her, she slid onto the bench across from him, and bent near him to hear his whisper.

"It's a government facility. The FBI keeps a bunch of investigators there. Somethin's up in this town."

She gasped, and immediately concealed it with a cough. He glanced quizzically at her. Maria tried hard to smile reassuringly.

"Go on. I'm sorry."

"Somethin' funny" he repeated, staring hard at her the entire time. "Some one funny. A coupla them. You wouldn't know them, of course, 'cause you just don't look like the type to be associated with that element, but I've been noticing it. Yup."

She no longer heard him. There was a file folder beneath his hand, with a sheaf of Polaroid's sticking out in the corners. In slow-motion, she saw him taking them out. Turning them over. She didn't need to be told who they were.

"These three" he said. "Know any of 'em?"

"No" she managed to convincingly choke out, staring hard at the pictures.

Max and Isabel Evans.

Michael.

"That's a shame" he said, pocketing the pictures again.

Michael was right! Maria felt like crying. Either that, or grabbing the folder and running out the door with it, and driving straight out to the New Mexico desert, where she could bury it in the sand. But what would that do, except convince everyone concerned that there was 'somethin' up with her, too?

"What... what are you going to do with that, sir?" she asked, casually.

He stroked his chin. He had stubble, she noticed, and his ego was stroked by this pretty, young girl talking to him.

"I'm thinking I'll hang on to them until tomorrow" he said. "Then I'll take 'em out to the Feds. Maybe they're normal, and I'm just a suspicious old geezer, but one gets the feeling that there's generally a big reward for information like this if it goes somewhere, eh?" He was leering.

*Tomorrow* she told herself, repeating it like a mantra. *I have time!*

She smiled at the guy as he left, waving nauseatingly as the bells of the Crashdown tinkled.