Enlightenment

Author: Debbie
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I would MUCH rather own Max, but, sadly, I don't own anything. Not even the story concept - Craww gets the credit for that.
Author’s note: Post-Harvest: Angry Max confronts Kyle about Liz, with unexpected results.
Feedback: You see that link to my name up there? Please use it to tell me what you think.

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The minute they arrived back in Roswell from Copper Summit, Max left the others at the Crashdown, jumped back in the Jeep and sped off.

He had spent the long drive back obsessing. What the hell was going on with Liz? What was she hiding? Her secrecy was driving him insane - he HAD to know the truth now. He wasn't even sure why anymore. A sense of desperation was building inside of him, mounting even as his anger did. He was supposed to be with Liz - wasn't that what he had always believed, always been taught? Boy meets girl. Boy and girl fall in love and live happily ever after. That's how it worked, right? The accepted standard on this planet? All his life he had followed the "normal" path, to blend in. He had to get Liz to cooperate, by whatever means, so he could achieve this normalcy again. That's all there was to it. He was so fixated by this goal that love or affection was becoming less and less of an issue.

Anger and frustration raged in him as he sped down the streets of Roswell. He felt off-balance emotionally, had felt this way for months now. There had been a few moments of inner peace last February, but it soon had vanished, and the more he grasped for it, focusing all his attention on Liz, the more it eluded him. Now he acted purely on instinct, hardly able to see, much less think, as the obsessive need to gather his splintered sense of self back together drove all other concerns out of his head.

Imbalance.

Only one thought filled him now - Kyle. He had to see Kyle. That's where the truth lay.

With a screech of brakes he pulled up in front of Kyle's home. Max noted absently that the Sheriff's car was gone - the elder Valenti was probably at work, then. Good. There would be no one to interfere.

He pounded on the front door. "Kyle!" he roared. "Kyle, damn you, open the door!" He didn't care who heard. "I'm gonna open it myself in 10 seconds! 1 ... 2 ..."

Kyle opened the door and stood there, calmly. "Evans. What can I do for you?"

Max closed the gap between them and grabbed Kyle by his shirtfront. "What the hell is going on, Kyle?" he yelled hoarsely. "Why were you in bed with Liz? What is the truth? Tell me!"

Seeking.

Kyle remained calm, merely raising an eyebrow at Max until he let go of Kyle's shirt. "Even if a fool lived with a wise man all his life, he would still not recognize the truth," Kyle quoted.

Max lowered his voice, giving it a quiet menace now. "Tell me the truth anyway, you bastard. I'm not leaving until you do."

Kyle's tight voice showed he was losing some of his serenity. "Occasions of hatred are certainly never settled by hatred. They are settled by freedom from hatred."

Max's response was to push his way into the house, shoving Kyle ahead of him until he had pinned Kyle to the nearest wall, one hand on his chest in mimicry of the moment of healing. "I can take you out just as surely as I saved you," Max hissed. He felt Kyle's muscles ripple under his hand, like a cobra coiling to strike, and felt something within him stir in response.

Sensing.

Kyle's tranquility deserted him. "You asked for it, Evans," he snarled, knocking Max's hand aside in one swift movement. "Never threaten a champion wrestler." And with that he threw himself at Max, knocking him to the floor. Max scrambled up quickly, reacting blindly, all his pent-up energy and frustration spilling out as he and Kyle thrashed around the living room, each trying to pin the other. Kyle was considerably smaller, but his stature made it easier for him to squirm out of Max's grasp and he was just as powerfully built, if not more so, than his opponent.

Max was finding it harder and harder to concentrate, however. As soon as he had touched Kyle directly, he began to see flashes.

A young Kyle, sitting at his desk next to Max in their 5th-grade class. A mental image of Kyle feeling as off-balance as he. The moment he had saved Kyle.

He felt disoriented, like something inside him was trying to leave, reaching out for an unknown goal. He shook off the haze of confusion just as Kyle knocked him over the back of the sofa. They tumbled to the ground. In an instant, Max rolled Kyle over and sat on him triumphantly, one hand pinning Kyle's wrists over his head.

More flashes filled his mind's eye as they lay there, panting.

Kyle posing - posing! - with Liz in bed. A setup.

The truth almost went unnoticed, though, because this image was immediately followed by another one.

Kyle, admittimg he saw flashes of Max naked, and trying to cover it up with an embarrassed laugh.

Finding.

Somehow, Max knew that this, too, was the truth, and before he knew what he was doing, he found himself kissing Kyle. Fiercely, passionately, urgently. The sense that something inside him was reaching out intensified, until he felt his soul pour out like a river to meet with Kyle's. Their souls swirled together, forming a new whole, a connection unlike any he had ever experienced. More flashes filled his head, pictures of Kyle's most intimate thoughts and memories, burning their way into the raw, new channels their bonding had forged in his body.

As Max's fractured sense of self snapped back into place, he realized that the brief peace he had experienced the previous winter had come, not from Liz, but from the evening of bonding he had spent with Kyle. He had chalked up the sense of unity as something falsely achieved with alcohol, but now, with the truth laid bare before him, he knew otherwise.

Completion.

Coming back into himself in a rush, Max suddenly felt that perhaps he was prying, seeing so much of Kyle's private thoughts, and he made a deliberate effort to close his mental channel down. "Don't." Kyle gasped. Max looked at him, startled. "Don't shut me out," Kyle managed again, hardly able to form the words. He locked eyes with Max and they stared at each other a moment, feeling the pulse of the new bond between them. "Holy shit, that was ... fucking amazing."

Kyle worked one of his hands free from where Max still had them pinned. Snaking it around Max's neck, he pulled the other boy's head down until Max lay stretched out on top of Kyle, their lips meeting in another urgent kiss, hard cocks pressed against each other through the restrictive denim. All the strain that had built up during the months of their denial suddenly demanded release. They pulled frantically at each other's clothing, consumed with the need to seal their connection physically as well as emotionally. Their mind-to-mind bond sharpened the experience beyond Max's wildest dreams - he felt Kyle's excitement, felt every sensation as if it were his own, and he could only assume that Kyle felt the same from his reactions. In their physical union, they cemented their bond.

Afterwards, they collapsed where they were in the living room, too exhausted by the day's events to move to the bedroom or even to put their clothing back on. And that's where Tess found them a few hours later, her shriek of stunned surprise rousing them, in unison, out of sleep.

Continue to part 2