Kyle had just finished beating the eggs when he heard somebody else coming up the hall. "Good morning, I'm making French toast for breakfast," he called, and then poked his head into the dining room before saying anything else. The sight of Tess made him smile - she was looking very pretty in a fluffy blue robe that wasn't long enough to cover more than half of her thighs, and also warm white socks. Her hair seemed nearly straight, as if the nightmares had tossed her curls away, though Kyle knew that she'd probably just woken up, decided that she felt like straighter hair, and waved her hands accordingly. "The Tabasco's already out on the table."

"You're much too good to me," she said with a smile. "Did you get back to sleep at all after I woke you?"

"Ehh, I think so, not sure," Kyle admitted. "I was awake enough at five AM to get up and think about cooking. So - do you want to talk more about the dream now?"

"No, because we've got other things to discuss." She stepped over next to him and planted her lips solidly on the side of his neck. "We're on surveillance duty today, nearly all day, and I want to see if I can make it over to Liz's place to ask her a few questions about the blue crystals first."

"Nearly all day?" Kyle repeated. "It's a school day."

"Since when has that stopped you?" Tess teased. Kyle looked up from the stove, and saw that she'd poured a glass of grapefruit juice while he'd been cooking and was sitting at the table.

"Well, since I'm trying to pass Co-ordinate geometry this year and not have to take it again come fall."

"Does Henderson have a test scheduled?"

"No," Kyle admitted. "Can you toss me the bread, please?"

"Huh? Okay, just a second." Kyle watched somewhat curiously as Tess got up, picked the wrapped loaf of bread off the counter, and lobbed it all of maybe two feet into his waiting hands.

"Well, that works. I guess I was expecting you to just use your powers."

"This early in the morning?" Tess sighed. "Maybe if you want it to either bounce off your forehead or separated into a cloud of bread crumbs."

"All right." As Kyle opened up the bag and retrieved a slice, he reconsidered his assumption that Tess had already used alien powers on her hair. "So, Henderson and geometry. Not even much chance of a pop quiz, I admit. But, well, I've been sort of..."

"Grab your books," Tess suggested. "I can do the tutor-girl thing while we watch. Whatever might happen at the station with Laurie Dupree, it's not likely to wait for school to let out."

"Okay, fair enough," Kyle agreed. "So, why do you want to ask Liz about the crystals? I thought it was Max who actually had one."

There was a pause, and then Tess muttered something under her breath.

"What's wrong?" Kyle asked, tearing his attention from the first slice of French toast to stare into the dining room.

"Nothing big," Tess insisted. "I just spilled some juice. To answer your question, I could talk to Max, yeah, but since they're both a little twitchy about my past affections, I figured that it might be easier to be around Liz. I know that she's been working with him, studying it."

"Any idea what they've found out so far?"

"Not much." Tess let out a frustrated breath. "They're some kind of alien life form, we don't know how many of them are out there in Frazier woods or what they can do - or what they have to do with Laurie Dupree."

"Right," Kyle repeated. "And Laurie's grandfather, who looked a lot like Michael when he was young."

"That's about it," Tess agreed. "Good morning, Mister V. I'm calling dibs on the first piece of French toast."

"That's alright, Tess," Kyle's Dad said. "I'm not sure I could keep anything but coffee down. I've got my first job interview in twelve years this morning."

"Well, that explains the wardrobe choices, Dad," Kyle put in. His father was looking neat and scrubbed, in a gray suit that Kyle had only seen him put on for funerals, weddings, and few courtroom appearances where the sheriff's uniform would have been inappropriate. "Good luck, and remember that whoever it is, they'd be lucky to have you working for them. Who the heck is hiring, anyway?"

Dad chuckled. "MetaChem - the company putting up that bio-research facility on the edge of town. They've advertised that they want a candidate with experience in law enforcement to be head of security - both at the site during the remaining construction, and after the facility goes into operation."

"Oh," Tess muttered. "Isn't that the company that Grant Sorenson works for?"

"It was, back when Grant first came to Roswell," Dad agreed, taking the second seat at the table. "Max asked for my help in checking out his credentials, when Grant brought in those bones. He was a short-term contractor, and I think it didn't take him long to write his report of assessment on the MetaChem site and collect his pay. Then he took another contract for a non-profit who wanted some studies done on desert erosion patterns and how it was impacting something else."

"But he'd know people, and might be able to register an opinion if he finds out that you're applying for this job?" Kyle asked, having figured out where Tess' line of thought was going.

"Well, I suppose so. But I'm not really convinced that he would bother. I mean, he spouted off something about suing the county after I searched his tent, but there's been no follow-up yet."

"There's something else," Kyle said, feeling a lump in his throat. To buy some time, he made a production of taking the first slice of toast out to Tess and dipping a second piece of bread in the egg mixture. "When Tess and I were biking out on the desert trails the day before yesterday, I... I ran into Grant. Literally, and I made him break something."

"That was my fault," Tess said. "I went off the marked trail, so Kyle had to follow me and make sure that I didn't get myself lost, and I guess he was watching me and not where he was going. But the point is, Grant just freaked out. And he recognized that Kyle was your son, and that I was your - foster daughter, I guess. He sounded like there was nothing that he wouldn't do to give any of us payback for the wrongs that we've done him. And that night, he came by while we were out at dinner, and - well, he didn't even say anything, but the way he glared at me..."

"Ah, I didn't realize that things had escalated in that direction," Jim said mildly. "Thank you for letting me know. But still, I'm not worried. I've seen a lot of people make threats and threatening postures over the years, and yes, sometimes it does escalate to true violence, but we're all reasonably capable of protecting ourselves. As far as this job goes - if Grant manages to find out and gives me a bad reference, and they don't give me an opportunity because of that - as Kyle suggested, that's their loss. I'll just find another opportunity, with someone who wouldn't give Grant as much credit."

"That sounds good, Dad," Kyle said. "Do you need to head out the door, right now?"

"No, the appointment isn't until ten." Dad looked down at his suit. "I probably shouldn't have gotten dressed up quite so early, should I? It's just more of an opportunity to get a stain on the fabric."

"Consider this a dry run," Tess suggested. "To make sure that there's no problem with the outfit. But you should take it off now that you've confirmed - and eat something. Seriously. You won't be able to knock MetaChem's socks off with low blood sugar."

Dad looked over at Kyle, who shrugged and flipped the toast on the frying pan. "My girlfriend's got a point."

"Okay, okay." Dad nodded decisively, and exited in the direction of the hallway.

"So, do you want me to come to the Crashdown with you?" Kyle asked Tess once he was gone.

"No, that's okay, really. I need to figure out how to get along with Liz without anybody else mediating."

"Okay," Kyle said. "Maybe I should go by the school and see if I can find one of the guys to pick up homework for me. When do we need to be at the lookout point?"

"Well, I'll probably be ready by quarter to nine," Tess said. "That seems to be about when Agent Duff starts her working day, as far as anybody's been able to find out. Michael and Maria will be blowing off their seventh period and relieving us at two thirty."

"Sounds good," Kyle said. "I'll try to be there by eight forty." And then, something gave him the impulse to flip the French toast over onto his plate, without even lifting up a corner to peek. Perfectly golden brown. "Not bad, not bad at all," he muttered to himself.

#

Liz was just finishing her own breakfast when Tess walked through the front doors of the Crashdown dining room. Liz was dressed in jeans and a dark orange t-shirt instead of her waitress uniform, and looked up from the crumb-filled plate as Tess approached. "Miss Harding, what can I do for you this morning?"

"Talk to me about Frazier woods," Tess said.

"Umm, yeah, okay - while you drive me to school?"

"Sure."

Neither of the girls said anything as Liz grabbed her light jacket and book bag, or on the way out to Tess' SUV in the parking lot. When she opened up the car, though, Tess turned to Liz. "I feel like there's a question you want to ask, but can't figure out how to start. Something about Kyle and I, maybe?"

Liz chuckled. "Maybe just 'how are things going between the two of you?' I feel funny about prying into your love life, but..."

"But it's the one thing that's keeping me from interfering with your love life," Tess pointed out, and chuckled. Both of them opened their doors and entered the car, nearly in unison. "We're doing okay, I think - though I had to backing away from getting too physical at three o'clock this morning - it just wasn't something that I felt ready for. But that's private stuff that I probably shouldn't be telling you."

"Fair enough," Liz agreed. She left it at that for a moment, and Tess pulled out of her parking spot and onto the street. "So, what do you need to know, and is it actually about Frazier woods in general, or more about blue crystals?"

"The crystals," Tess agreed. "Something that's been bugging me when we talk about them, that probably you never put much thought into. We've been talking about these blue jobbies as alien life-forms, alien cells, but you and Max have been studying them in microscopes. So..."

"Oh, yeah, I think I see what you're driving at," Liz said with a little chuckle. "Michael and Maria asked too, so maybe we should have reviewed with the entire group. A single crystal is - well, it might be a life-form in the same way that you and I are, or it might not, depending on where you draw the lines. It's definitely not one huge cell - it's a big mass of little living cells, a bit like you or me or an ant - except that with us, the cells are different and each have their own job to do. For the blue-crystal creatures, all of the cells are uniform as far as we can see, which is something that I haven't come across in biology so far - they're a bit like mushrooms, except that in mushrooms the different parts of the cell are specialized. Part of each fungus cell forms a root, then another part of the same cell is in the stem, and another part of the cap, then the part that releases the spores. Maybe mould fits, actually - that's pretty undifferentiated, as a collection of cells."

"Great," Tess said, trying to absorb this spiel of information that Liz had just unloaded onto her. So we've got alien mould, or something like it, down in Frazier woods?"

"Something like - I mean, the cells don't really fit any of the other criteria for fungus - maybe alien sponges? I don't really know. Or maybe they don't really qualify as single life forms, just a big pile of little alien buggers that happen to be sticking to each other."

Somehow that managed to trigger something from Tess' own struggles with high school biology class. "If none of the cells are specialized, how do the ones in the middle feed?"

"Max and I both wondered, but we don't know what any of the cells feed on - except that they tried to snack on him that once, and didn't like the taste." Liz sighed. "Is any of this helpful?"

"I guess so," Tess said after a moment. "Alien sponges underground, with mysterious eating habits. I guess I'll have to be satisfied with that for now. And we're just watching the Sheriff's station to keep an eye on Laurie Dupree, and see if we can spot any clue to why there's a connection between her and the alien sponges."

"Yup," Liz said. "You and Kyle should have fun watching today."

"How much fun did you and Max have?" Liz managed a half-smile, and Tess sighed to herself. "Okay, okay - I guess it's too weird for me to be fishing for vicarious details about your love life with the guy I used to be obsessed over."

"Just a smidge," Liz said. "But it's probably a step forward from you plotting to have a love life with Max yourself."

"Yeah." Tess nodded. "So, what else is going on in the life of Liz Parker?"

"Not much," Liz said. "I keep thinking about what Alex told me about his trip to Sweden. I really do want to travel more, maybe this summer."

"Hey, you travelled last summer, more than any of the rest of us did."

"Florida doesn't really count as travelling."

"Says who?"

#

Kyle was waiting around in the parking lot of the Hi-ho grocery mart when Tess finally pulled up. "Hey, what are you doing hanging around here?" she asked as she hopped out of the SUV. "With so many deputies coming in and out of the area, you might actually get a ticket for loitering."

"Well, I wasn't sure where else to meet you," he said. "It wasn't like you told me exactly how to get up to this lookout spot of Michael's."

"Oh, right, that's kind of important, isn't it? And - I'm sorry for snapping at you, honey." The two of them came together for a quick kiss. "Just out of curiosity, did you try going around the building and looking for an obvious access?"

"Well, yes," Kyle admitted. "I didn't see one - where is it?"

"It's not obvious," Tess reassured him, leading him around the edge of the strip mall block, and Kyle followed, carrying the bag of gear that Tess had left in his car. "At least, I wouldn't find it so. Which makes sense; otherwise they'd probably always have kids sneaking up there. But I was curious about whether you had enough initiative to try that."

"Does it matter?"

"In a 'getting to know you' way? Of course it matters. Is it a skill that you'll need to be practicing? That depends on how often you'll be willing to get involved in this sort of alien stuff."

"Well, I was seldom able to get out of being involved, even when I wasn't... dating you. Now I guess I'm up to - well, up to the level of taking on a minimum amount of danger for what seems like a reasonable necessity."

"I see. Come on." By this time they were at the back of the storefronts, and Tess reached out her hand, holding it over a steel doorknob. Kyle saw a trace of a faint yellow glow that faded out when Tess turned the knob and opened the door. Quietly she led him down the dim hallway, around a corner and past a few open storerooms, and then opened another door that led to the stairs heading upwards.

"Enjoying the view 'back there'?" Tess asked when she was about halfway up.

"Uhh... well, yeah. Were you guessing, or can you actually see into my brain or something?"

Tess sighed and shook her head slightly while doing the little hand-glow trick on the door at the top of the stairs. "Neither, really. I mean, I could sense a bit of what you're seeing if I really concentrated, because that's something I need to do in order to override it with what I want somebody to see if I'm mind-warping them. But I wasn't doing that. I heard you moaning."

"Whoops." Kyle hadn't even realized that he was making a sound. "Sorry, I guess."

"Nah, it's okay," Tess told him. The door was swinging open now, and after heading out onto the roof, Tess turned around so that she could face him. "I didn't realize that these clothes made the 'good butt' list, though." She gestured at the brown slacks that she was wearing that day.

"I'm not sure that there's much that would end up on the 'bad butt' list, or even 'mediocre butt', on you," Kyle told her earnestly. "Especially not anything that tight. That's a great top too, while I'm at it - the ensemble is enough that I might have a hard time keeping my eyes on watching the station, and my mind on what we're really supposed to be doing up here all day."

"Hmm... thanks, and I could say the same for you." Kyle looked down at the black t-shirt that he was wearing, and his blue-jeans, and realized with surprise that everything was tight enough to show off his muscles. Tess laughed playfully at his reaction.

"But we probably should get right to it. Hand me the bag," Tess said after a momentary pause. Once Kyle did, Tess extracted two pairs of binoculars from it, and led him over to the front ledge of the roof, to a spot in front of the dark 'Open 24 hours' sign. To their right was the printed sign for the cheese shop next door, and Kyle poked his head over the ledge for a moment, long enough to realize that they were over the main entrance for the Hi-ho market.

"Okay, where are we supposed to be looking?" he asked. "I mean, I can see the station from here, obviously, but which window is Duff's office?"

"It's second from the left, on the ground floor," Tess said, the eyepieces of her small binoculars already brought up to her face. "It doesn't look like our Special Agent is in yet, this morning. So we probably don't need to keep staring, just remember to check every ten minutes or so." Tess put the binoculars down and spent a little while peering at her digital watch and pressing buttons on it. "Do you have any ideas for how to distract ourselves in the meantime?"

"If it's okay with you, I'd like to talk a bit more," Kyle admitted, carefully sitting down on the rough asphalt surface of the roof. Tess raised an eyebrow at that, but she sat down too, silently. "Yeah, a bit of a shocker I know, but really, what's the fun of making out when you know that you're on a timer, really? And we've got all day. Probably, after being around you for a few hours, I'll be jumping at the smallest chance, but I'm not there yet."

"Okay," Tess said, nodding. "So what do you want to bring up for discussion?"

Half a dozen possible questions raced through Kyle's mind, and he chose the one that seemed least likely to upset his new sweetheart. "How did things go with Liz?"

"Well, she was able to explain a few things that were puzzling me about those alien crystal things, and more generally, I think that the barrier between the two of us is starting to thaw, which is definitely a good thing." She looked around. "Maybe I should have given up on snagging Max for myself much sooner - I could have saved myself a lot of pain if I'd been less stubborn. I think I knew a long time ago that I didn't stand much of a chance."

"How long ago?" Kyle asked.

"Let's see - maybe last summer, a week after school let out. I'd heard from Michael that Liz had gone to Florida, and that Max was in a bit of a funk, so I went over to his house, to surprise him, do my best to cheer him up."

"Okay, I'm with you so far," Kyle agreed. "Just how cheery were you prepared to be?"

Tess shook her head. "There was very little I wasn't prepared to do - and just since I think you'll appreciate the mental picture, I'll mention that I drove over wearing a bikini and cut-off hot pants as a cover-up."

"Oh, my. The brain boggles - or at least, I think that's my brain."

"Yeah, Max seemed halfway happy to see me at first; he invited me in, offered me a choice of cool beverages, and we sat out in the shade on the backyard deck. I asked him how he was doing, he said alright, and I mentioned that I heard Liz had gone out of town for the summer, and - I don't know, it was like some switch inside Max got flipped, that nothing else has touched in him, before or since."

"Really?" Kyle asked. "What was that like?"

"Well, it kind of started small and grew," Tess admitted. "First he was kind of snippy and sarcastic, then really angry, and finally he started pacing back and forth, ranting at a volume just short of a shout, and calling me really nasty names." She shuddered. "The gist of it, though, was that he didn't believe I was at all sincere in my concern over his reaction to Liz leaving, that it was my fault she'd gone, that he didn't like me or think that I was desirable as a replacement for her." She took a deep breath. "And - this was the part that hurt the most of all, really - that because of me, he was struggling without the support and friendship of the one person he trusted the most in the entire world, as he dealt with trying to come to terms with Pierce torturing him in the White Room."

"Whoa, wait up there, hold the phone!" Kyle said. "Pierce? As in, the guy I handed a gun to in the UFO center, setting myself up to get accidentally shot by Dad?"

"Well, yeah." Tess cocked her head to one side slightly.

"And he tortured Max Evans - somewhere white? When?"

"Umm - maybe twenty-four hours before you slipped into the UFO center, with the gun." Tess' eyes narrowed slightly. "Didn't you hear that Max was missing? No, I guess nobody would have told you. I guess I thought that your father would have told you about the whole thing after it was over."

"He tried, but I didn't want to listen at the time - and after I got back from football camp, there was a whole new batch of freaky alien news."

"All right." Tess took a deep breath. "You knew that your father had gone missing, right?"

"Well, yeah, that was why I was so pissed."

"Liz, Maria and Alex went to ask for his help getting Max out. All five of us could have been captured if it wasn't for him."

"All five of whom?"

"Max, Michael, Isabel, me, and Ed. The other four of us went up to Eagle Rock base to get Max out, but we couldn't quite manage to get ourselves..."

And then Tess' countdown timer started to sound, and she pressed a button to silence it after a few beeps, then grabbed the binoculars and turned around to look across the street. "Good morning, Agent Duff - and what are you up to this fine morning?"

Kyle shrugged, got up, and went to crouch next to her, using his own binoculars. He could see a young woman in the window with straight blonde hair - presumably Laurie Dupree. It was hard to tell what was going on without some sort of super-hearing, though.

#

"Hey - did you guys really think that we were Sheriff Hanson and one of his deputies coming to throw you out of here?" Michael asked.

Tess looked over at Michael and Maria where they stood next to the roof stairs. "Um, yeah," she admitted, and slipped the material of her T-shirt back down over her chest. "But the make out session started before we'd heard anybody coming, honestly."

"I see," Maria said. "How much before? Eight hours ago?"

"No, we've been on the job for most of that time, doing the stakeout thing," Kyle muttered, trying to match Tess' unruffled demeanour, but girls appeared to have an advantage in terms of getting taken seriously when caught in flagrante. "But Duff took off for an errand or something, and nothing else important has happened since then."

"Okay, maybe she's getting a late lunch or something," Michael said. "Whatever. We can take it from here - but has anything else important been going on?"

"She's been interrogating Laurie all day," Tess reported. "Trying to pull the good-cop, bad-cop routine all by herself, as far as we can tell, and Laurie doesn't seem to like it much. Whatever it is that Agent Duff wants to hear, either Laurie doesn't know it or doesn't understand the question."

"Or maybe she just doesn't trust her," Maria suggested. "Is there anything else?"

"Not really," Kyle decided. "Oh, Tess wigged out slightly when some unfamiliar guys in blue suits went inside, but they didn't stay long."

Michael and Maria exchanged looks. "Maybe it doesn't have anything to do with any of us," Maria suggested.

"Yeah, we all hope so," Tess said, packing up some of the leavings of their lunch and snacks into the bags that they'd come from. "Have a good evening's stakeout."

"Maybe if things are quiet on the Sheriff's front, we can have as much fun as the two of you did," Maria called.

Tess headed over to the passenger side door of Kyle's car. "Umm, aren't you forgetting something?" he asked her, weighing the keys in his hand.

"Probably... want to give me a clue, honey?"

"We drove here separately," he prompted. "Or were you intending to leave Big Blue parked here all night?"

"Oh, right," she said, looking around for her SUV. "Big Blue?"

"Yeah, didn't that name start with you?" he asked, and Tess shrugged uncertainly. "Okay, I guess not. I wonder who I heard it from, then."

"It seems a bit odd that someone in the gang would nickname my SUV," Tess admitted. "Though - well, it is big for a vehicle, especially compared with how short I am as a person. And it's such a pretty shade of blue. The name does fit."

"There's a lot of vehicle names that circle around in the gang, and I've never been sure who came up with them," Kyle admitted. "Max's Jeep is 'Bob' and Amy DeLuca's Jetta is 'Genie,' and I've never figured out a reason why for either of them. Well, we really should both put in an appearance at school for last period - that was the whole point of Michael and Maria taking over for us now, right?" Tess nodded reluctant agreement. "After that, is it alright if we just meet up at home?"

"That definitely makes sense as a first step," she admitted. "If we go anywhere else tonight, I'd like it to be going together, on foot or in a single vehicle. Home is where both of our cars will need to be for tomorrow morning, so we can figure it out from there."

"That sounds good to me." And then, for no very good reason except he suddenly wanted to, Kyle went around the car and gave Tess a kiss goodbye to last him until they could next be together.

#

Kyle didn't arrive until an hour after school had let out, on account of basketball practice, which he'd forgotten about until Pauly reminded him about it in the history classroom. He found Tess at the dinner table, finishing off a glass of coke that presumably had Tabasco stirred into it. "Hey, I'm sorry if I left you waiting. Is Dad around?"

"Nope, he's over at Amy's for the evening," Tess said, picking up a large post-it note between her fingers and showing it to Kyle, though he couldn't really make out the letters before he got closer. "Apparently the job interview went fairly well."

Kyle sighed to himself, as Tess referring to that interview immediately made him think of Grant Sorenson and his quest for payback. "Well, good for him," he managed to say.

Tess took a sip of her drink, and smiled to herself. "So, I've been thinking - since we spent all day doing something that was really my idea, you should be able to pick the activity for tonight. Well, within the established ground rules, more or less."

Kyle chuckled. "Well, I don't really feel like going out elsewhere and being with anybody else, and it sounds like we've got the house to ourselves for a few hours. So how about - we pull out the game console?" Tess' full mouth quirked downward. "You don't want to, do you?"

"Yes, I do, it'll be fun," she managed. "I hope. I mean, yeah, it wasn't what I was thinking of, but I meant it when I said that it should be your choice."

"Well, this probably sounds too sappy, but what I really choose is something that you'd like too," Kyle said firmly, and Tess smiled that very vulnerable smile that she only showed very rarely. "Okay, let's see - if we're staying in, we could watch a movie instead, or just go to the Crashdown and hang out - again."

"Yeah, I'll go for option C, at least to start," Tess said. "Not to run into Max or anything, I promise, just - we've been alone together all day, really, and though I do like spending time alone with you, it'd be nice to be a bit more social. You're sure that you're okay with that?"

"Yeah, of course," Kyle said. "You want to head out right now?"

"No, give me a few minutes." Tess stood up and looked down at herself. "I feel like changing, dressing up, just for the heck of it. You can slip into the shower ahead of me, if you feel like it."

"It's not like you need to use water," Kyle teased her. "You can just wave your hands and get clean in a few seconds, right?"

"Yeah, but that's not really as fun."

"Well, you know what the most fun shower of all is, right?"

Tess chuckled. "Yeah, I do - and see above under 'ground rules.' When I'm ready, though, we'll certainly have to give that one a try."