The Miracle Worker
Mere G ( [email protected] )
Content: Slash; PG; Jim POV
Disclaimer: Please. If I owned them, the characters would be having way more
fun.
Distribution: Just ask, I won't say no.
Feedback: I'm insecure and broke. Give me a cheap thrill and send me
feedback.
Dedication: For everyone who gave me dirty looks when I wrote m&m and
cheered when I mentioned working on this puppy.
Author's Note: This fic took forever and ended up going off in a really
wierd (and unintentional) direction. I'm not really sure what I think of it
yet; another version is definitely a possibility in the near future.
It took me so long to realize what I was missing.
It took my whole life and all of my dreams and a boy who knew more than he
could contain.
Being married to Michelle felt right, or at least damn close. Being a
small-town sheriff was enough. I never felt stifled, or caged, or desperate.
My fantasies didn't involve men, or women other than my wife, really.
Imagination isn't exactly my strong point.
I didn't feel freed when she left Kyle and me, only lost. She didn't leave
because of the secret.
Back then, there was nothing to hide.
I suppose this story doesn't make a lot of sense. There should have been
warning signs, or some kind of vague foreshadowing. I should have noticed
Max the first time I saw him and not known exactly why, or I should have had
a crush on a dark-eyed kid back in high school, or I should have always been
fixated on aliens. I should have realized something was off.
But I think any of that would just have diminished what is now.
There was nothing before it. Only darkness that I couldn't recognize because
I had never seen a light.
Technically, the FBI is still investigating. Nasedo is still dangerous. But
there's no reason to be scared, now. It doesn't even matter what the odds
are, not when miracles are on our side.
I never was religious. Dad was too busy believing in aliens to worry about
anything else, and I guess, somewhere along the line, I stopped being able
to separate faith of any kind from my father's obsession. But Max makes me
feel like praying.
He makes me want to go out to the middle of the desert and scream thanks at
outer space.
He makes me want all kinds of things.
Max's skin is so perfectly smooth. His strength wasn't got with a lifetime
of hard labor, his strong hands aren't calloused like mine. His eyes are all
sweet and young and deep - full of secrets and knowledge that I don't even
come close to understanding. I look into them and I know beyond a doubt that
if I live to be a hundred I'll still never learn half of what he knew from
the beginning.
I never saw the pod, the actual one, but in my dreams the image is there,
sharper, brighter than real memories. That's how I imagine Max's knowing -
like waking up with a feeling you can't shake, a picture you can't ever
describe, and your chest is aching because in your whole life you didn't
understand what becomes so painfully clear in that moment and slips away
before you realize how amazing it was.
Hell, if I was a poet, I could say it better. But I barely got a C in high
school creative writing class, so don't expect too much.
What I mean is - well, he's not like other people. And not just that he's a
different species, or has a different essence, or any of that. He's just...
Max saved Liz Parker, and he saved my son, and he saved this whole goddamn
town, if you think about it right. Without the tourist industry, what would
Roswell have? A cheese factory and a couple trailer parks? Max is
everything. Max is everything and he doesn't even know it.
How did I not notice how off-balance the world used to be?
Looking back, I can see, now, how there had to be something else, someone
else, to make up for all of it. The evil, that is. The wrongness.
Maybe that's why I went into law enforcement, all those years ago - I saw
how uneven it was, how unfair, and that something needed to be fixed. I
don't even remember anymore. Probably I just wanted to make my old man
proud, keep Michelle happy and safe.
Either way, I was fighting a losing battle.
But now I see what needs to be done.
Max told me the story, about how the four of them crashed here, the message
from his mother, the alien who was supposed to protect them.
The three - sister, second, wife - who were supposed to follow him.
And the others, humans, who got drawn in.
Me and Kyle.
And he told me other things, too, things I don't understand and can't
explain, things I turn over at night again and again. Why he's here and
nowhere else, why the sky spit him out in this godforsaken desert to save
Liz, to save poor Diane Evans from her loneliness, to save my boy.
To save all of us.
The first night, he landed.
The second night, my father left and didn't come back with his senses. That
third dark night I realized that the world was not what I had thought it
was.
The fourth night he was in my dreams and his skin was soft and brand-new and
his eyes were old and his touch was soft and he whispered to me.
That on that first night, so long ago, the sky was lit up with stars.
That the desert was scorched with fire.
And the world began to be right.
END
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