Disclaimer : Characters, situation of Roswell and in this story do not belong to me, belong to Fox (?) Not trying to make any money out of them. Please don't sue.
Set in Season 3 Ep "Samuel Rising" where Michael follows Maria home at the end of the night.
Selfless
"It's Christmas. I don't want to be alone."
Michael hears the words come out of his mouth and watches her face. He senses it, as well as sees it, a softening, not quite into belief, but into resigned amusement. Everyone thinks Liz is the soft one, the one who is deep and who feels the most, and maybe they are right. But Liz is also selfish – he has seen, rather than watched (because watching would mean caring) – the relationship between Maria and Liz and understands it, reluctantly. It is not that Liz is not a good friend, because she is, when she remembers that there are other feelings, besides her own, and that people's lives move on without her at the centre of it. He cannot recall the number of times he has heard Maria complain about him – the walls at the Crashdown café are thin, and maybe when he hears Maria say his name he listens – only to be interrupted by Liz saying, "Ugh. I know what you mean. Max –". Sometimes Liz even foregoes this courtesy, plunging straight into, "Max –" at which point Michael goes back to the burgers and salads and fries that people seem to want.
At first, Michael just didn't get why Maria would keep listening to Liz. There are only so many times that you can listen to an account of a tortured, soul-mate relationship full of doom and gloom and terror and flashes and feelings. First he thought maybe it was just a girl thing – maybe girls just like listening to that kind of gush. Then he realized that Maria never got to ramble on for hours about him – and that whenever he and Maria had a fight, she'd mention it to Liz in the barest of terms and sit back while Liz unfolded her drama of the week. He notices the way that Maria plays down whatever happens to her.
She doesn't do it in an obvious way – it took him a while to figure it out. Maria's always real dramatic, real emotional about things. She'll shriek about him – it's always about him, never about lip gloss or a broken nail or any of the other crappy girly stuff she's always yammering on about to him, he thinks he knows why, it's because it's got to be really important before Maria mentions it to Liz, and it makes him kind of happy 'cos he's special and kind of scared too, he doesn't want to mean that much to anybody, let alone Maria, because he cares about her, maybe too much – and her shrieking and histrionics diminishes whatever she's shrieking about (him, usually him), makes it into a trivial teenage girl drama next to Liz's deep soulmate crap. Maria does this so it's obvious that Liz is the star, that Liz is the one that important stuff happens to, that Liz is the one who really matters.
He has almost asked her, lots of times, too many that he cares to remember (he doesn't want to know why, he shouldn't want to know) – why she does this, why she lets Liz take the limelight in every way. But he knows, he knows why, it's the same reason that she lets him stay on the porch and offers him a hot chocolate even when she kind of knows that Christmas means about squat to him, the same reason she thought about marrying Brody last Christmas – he heard Liz mention it to Max, one of the few times she wasn't going on about her role in Max's life, yaddayaddayadda - the same reason that she let him in that long ago rainy night he doesn't like to think about, even when there was officially nothing going on between them.
It's because Maria cares. She cares too much. She kind of knows that Christmas means about squat to him, but she can't kick him off her porch because she doesn't know for certain. There's a tiny bit of her that believes that he is lonely, and because she loves him, that belief will hurt her if she doesn't do something to alleviate it. It's the reason she lets Liz ramble on about her own life, while relegating her own to the back burner; because when her dad left Liz was a really good friend and she grew to love her then and she knows Liz likes talking about Max and dramatizing, and not being centre of attention would hurt Liz, so she lets Liz be centre of attention while pretending not to do anything of the sort. There's only one selfish thing Maria has ever done during the time he's known her, and that's breaking up with him.
And he loves her for it. He loves her because she did it – she had to – and even though it hurt, and still hurts, he loves her because she hurts as well for doing it, maybe more than he does, although he kind of doesn't think that's possible. She hurts and feels guilty and still loves him, and that's why she's handing him a mug of hot chocolate with extra whipped cream and so much sugar it's clinging to the sides. He loves her because doing this for him, making sure he isn't lonely, is hurting her because she wants to let go and she can't as long as he makes demands of her, shows her some vulnerability, but she'll keep on doing it and keep on hurting because she doesn't want to hurt him anymore.
So he drinks the hot chocolate, and it's sweet enough to satisfy even his palate, and they talk about little things – he tells her about some trouble he's been having with the motorcycle, she tells him about how she broke a few nails at the Crashdown and had to cut them all off to even them out. He's happy she can talk to him about the little things she can't – won't – tell Liz, about all the tiny inconsequential things he imagines Alex was there for. He likes listening to all the small happiness and annoyances that affect her, because they make everything seem so simple and like life could be like this, made up of little joys and littler sorrows, and he would never get bored. He wonders, briefly, if that's why she tells him, if she knows that doing this lifts his spirits slightly, makes it easier to get away from Michael Guerin, second-in-command and closer to Michael Guerin, boyfriend, picket-fence dreamer. He wouldn't be surprised.