Maria's eyes were wild. "I thought you had trouble using your ... thing." He looked at her curiously, an eyebrow slightly arched. "Your powers," she explained quickly. "Your ... whatever it is that you do. I-I thought you couldn't do it properly."

"I can't, usually," he admitted.

She was surprised. "How come?"

"I don't know. I've just never been able to get it right. I can't ... control it. I always screw up."

"You didn't today. Twice, actually ... At Atherton's and just now," Maria replied softly, wiggling her fingers.

"How's your hand?" Michael asked gruffly, quickly changing the subject.

"Better. Actually, it's fine now."

He nodded. "Guess I just got lucky." Michael was trying to be nonchalant, but in actuality, he was flustered by what had just happened between them.

"I guess," she nodded, breathing in deeply.

Neither of them spoke for a little while. Michael studied the ground, his hands stuffed into his pockets, while Maria looked around the desert landscape anxiously. She was still a little shaken by whatever it was they had just shared. It was like a full body rush, adrenaline and electricity crashing into each together in an intoxicating, exhilarating swirl of emotions that left her confused and breathless and restless.

Michael's head felt light. In all his years on Earth, he had never experienced anything remotely like that before, and he felt drained, yet curiously sated -- like the entire universe had exploded inside him and he was floating away somewhere lazily on a shard of a star in its afterglow. He needed to sit down. Michael climbed onto the hood of the Jetta, then leaned back against the windscreen, his legs stretched out in front of him. It was only when he raised his head up and saw the calmness of the sky that he felt any sense of balance begin to return.

His movements pulled Maria from her thoughts, and she turned to face him, her abrupt words disguising her inner confusion. "What, um ... excuse me? Hello? What are you doing?"

"Shhh. Look up," he whispered hoarsely.

Maria tried to cover her uneasiness with babbling. "Yeah, um, Michael? I realize you have this unbridled urge to bond with the universe, but now really isn't the ti--" Her voice trailed off as she followed his eyes up into the night sky. "Wow."

He nodded gravely. "I know."

The stars were a blanket of security for Michael. Up there, everything made sense. Up there was peace. Up there somewhere, was his home. Not here, on earth, where he endured a dead-end existance in a trailer park, and made one intense, perfect connection with a human girl he barely knew. Life on earth was too confusing, too tumultuous. Focusing on the skies grounded him, and he felt a certain tranquility from the heavens rain down invisibly, sinking into his skin, comforting him.

Maria looked at him curiously. For the first time since she'd known him, Michael appeared relaxed. The earlier hostility and defensiveness had completely melted away, replaced with something Maria could only describe as ... serenity? She marvelled at the thought. Michael Guerin, serene? But there he was, wordlessly consuming the skyscape, looking completely at ease with the world. Suddenly, despite her earlier insistance, she didn't have the heart to ask him to get back in the car and go. Not yet.

As intently as Michael studied the stars, Maria studied him even more so. His silhouette looked as if it were sculpted from ivory marble. The moonlight had cast purple and blue shadows across the contours of his face, highlighting his cheekbones, chiselling his jaw, accentuating his lips. A very slight breeze ruffled his already-tousled hair. She shivered involuntarily, not wanting to stare but not being able to help it, either.

"Maria?"

She flushed a deep crimson at the sound of her name on his lips. There was something in the way he said it, something about the way he stretched out each syllable, that caused her spine to tingle and her skin to burn. Uncontrollably, her thoughts drifted to images of the two of them, her fingers tangled in his hair as he smothered her throat and collarbone with slow, feverish kisses, softly moaning her name again ...

"Ye-yeah?" she managed to stammer, her mouth as dry as the desert air which surrounded them.

Michael looked confused. "What's wrong?" Maria shook her head, trying to chase the thought from her brain. He frowned slightly, then his eyes shifted back towards the sky. "Look."

She walked over to the car on legs made of rubber bands and stood before him silently. "Here," Michael said, shifting over to give her space to sit. Maria swallowed again and took a deep breath. She climbed up on the narrow hood beside him and stiffly stared at the sky, unable to lean back comfortably against the windscreen like he did.

Michael could feel the heat radiate from her body and mesh with his own, as if his atoms were drawn to hers like magnets. Though they weren't quite touching, her presence unnerved him. He stole a glance at her. Against the moonlight, her silvery skin tempted him and he had to fight the overwhelming urge to trace a path with a fingertip across the shadowed planes of her cheeks, down to her jawline and all the way over to her mouth. The impulse to touch her finally proved to be too irresistable to deny, and his fingers reached out in the darkness for the hot velvety softness of her lips.

From the corner of her eye, Maria saw blurred movements and instinctively turned towards him. Quickly, Michael's outstretched hand tightened into a fist, and he pointed to a cluster of three bright stars. "See that? That's Orion. Well, part of it, anyway." Startled and confused by his sudden outburst, she nodded. "It's the part which makes up his belt," he continued. "And, um, there's the constellation of ... Leo? I think, or maybe it's Cancer. Something like that. All the signs of the Zodiac are up there somewhere."

If Maria thought Michael didn't notice her uncharacteristic silence, she was mistaken. Not only had he noticed, he was pretty sure the underlying reason for her lack of chatter was the same reason why his own vocal cords seemed to have abnormally kicked into overdrive. He gave her an awkward half-smile, then looked away, not quite knowing what to say or do next.

"I didn't know you liked astronomy," she commented quietly, attempting to shift their attention back to safer territory.

"Oh. Uh ... yeah," he nodded. "I do." Another long stretch of silence settled in, but it was more companionable than ones earlier in the evening. "Sometimes Max lets me borrow the jeep, and I come out to the desert at night. And I just lie on the ground, and watch the sky, and think about ... stuff." Maria blinked at him, and for some reason Michael felt compelled to explain himself further. "It, um, relaxes me ... it ... it calms me down."

The minute the words were out of his mouth, he regretted them. He felt foolish, utterly ridiculous, for telling her something so intensely private. It made him vulnerable, and vulnerable was bad. It was wrong. It was typical of all the things he tried so hard not to be. His cheeks grew hot when he saw the expression on her face, and Michael averted his eyes from the questions playing in her own. Clearly, she thought he was a freak.

Maria stared at him incredulously. It was as close as she'd ever gotten to any sort of real revelation about his life. Much more insightful than the stupid history questions Mr. Sommers had conjured up. This was like a little glimpse into his soul. She wrapped her arms around herself snugly in the chilly darkness. All of a sudden, the realization of where she was in context to what he had just said struck her. Michael hadn't merely shared the sentiment of an experience which was seemingly sacred to him, he had actually shared the experience itself -- the desert, the night, the sky, his thoughts ...

She couldn't understand why he had chosen to include her, but the realization that he had filled her with a giddy sort of contentment. Maria thought back to the night before, when they had confided to each other about spaceships and limousines whisking them away to the places they really belonged. Something told her Michael had never had a conversation like that with Max or Isabel before. The thought helped her muster up the courage to delve a little deeper into what he had just told her. She was sure he would just dismiss her with some sort of withering stare, but she needed to ask nonetheless. There was an unspoken world behind his eyes, and she suddenly found herself wanting to be let in.

"What kind of stuff?" she said timidly, twisting her bottom lip against her teeth.

He didn't answer straight away. A smirk tugged at the corners of his mouth and his lips were ready with a snide comment, but something in her eyes stopped him. Maria looked almost identical to the way he felt -- as if she had as much to lose by asking as he did by answering. It reminded him of the motel, when he had accused her of being a princess and she had simply said she wanted to go home. There was the same bare emotion in her eyes now, a quiet sort of sincerity which affected him in ways he hadn't even realized he was capable of feeling. It was all very confusing, but the only thing he seemed to know for certain was that he didn't want to hurt her.

"Dunno," Michael shrugged. "Just ... stuff." He spoke very quietly, staring up at the stars. There were so many conflicting thoughts and feelings and questions swirling about in his mind that he wouldn't have even known where to begin. He was sure she wouldn't have understood, anyway.

Maria leaned back against the windscreen beside him, resting her head against the roof of the car. "Like, which one of those stars belongs to you?" she asked softly.

Michael looked across at her, his eyes full of surprise. "Yeah." He nodded slightly, his voice barely above a whisper. "Sometimes."

"Only sometimes?" Her voice was light, and she hoped her small smile masked the insatiable curiosity she felt. Except Maria knew it was stronger than mere curiosity. It was as if all of a sudden, she had this need to know all about him, to delve into the depts of his mind and find out what made him what he was, who he was.

He looked up at the sky again with great concentration. Maria's heart sank. She had pushed too far, probed too deeply, and now he was going to ignore her. That hurt more than the taunting and arguing combined. She bit her lip again and looked at the ground, trying to think of the easiest way to extricate herself from the situation and just get back in the car with her dignity intact.

Finally, he spoke, his face a mixture of fear and pain. "Sometimes I don't think any of them belong to me at all."

Maria looked up, startled. He was cautiously peeling back another tiny corner of his soul, one paper-thin layer at a time. Each new revelation was a test of his trust in her, and she was determined to reciprocate the same sort of faith in him in return.

"Why wouldn't they?" she asked solemnly.

"I don't know." He cast his gaze down to the desert ground again. "Lots of reasons."

Maria drew her knees up to her chest, and hugged herself in the cool night air, waiting. That was the trick. If she didn't push, if she waited, he would come to her. It was like trying to coax a butterfly to rest on your hand. If she moved, or made noise, it would never happen. But if she was patient, and stood perfectly still, perfectly silent, it would find her. He would find her. Not that Michael Guerin was a butterfly, she thought to herself. Certainly, he wasn't as colourful, or as graceful. She studied his face again. But he was definitely as beautiful, and probably even more fragile.