Title: Brand
Author: walutahanga
Summary: Kyle doesn't like the word 'brand'. It implies ownership, a marking of property.
Disclaimer: I don't own Roswell, or any of it's characters.
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Kyle can still feel Max's touch.
He knows he was dead at the time. Everyone tells him so, in those gentle tones. He was dead with his father's bullet through his chest, and he couldn't have felt a thing.
But Max's touch was warm, and it lingered on his skin like the memory of summer. Kyle can make out each individual fingerprint, where Max's fingers pressed into his skin. Even after the silver faded, Max's touch lingers. Sometimes when Max brushes past him in the hall, or slaps his shoulder, the handprint on his chest will flare hot. That's how it felt, Kyle will think, when Max healed him. His touch was hot, searing into Kyle's skin like a brand. Kyle doesn't remember, and he doesn't dare ask Liz, but he's sure that's how it was.
Kyle doesn't like the word 'brand'. It implies ownership, a marking of property. And Kyle is no one's damn property, especially not some alien who stole his girlfriend and his father and got Kyle killed.
He tells himself that, but antagonism is weak, barely more than a flicker of resistance. No sooner has he managed to summon it up than it trickles away again, like sand between his fingers. He thinks about telling Max's secrets, of opening his mouth and letting them spill out, but the words won't come. He cannot betray Max any more than he can cut off his own hand.
He cannot say 'no' to Max either. Well, he can, but he never means it. Not for long anyway. Always his resistance slides away like sand, and he finds himself doing whatever it is that Max asks him to do. Each time he tells himself it will be different, but each time his body betrays him.
His body is the ultimate traitor. Things are changing beneath his skin, working towards a new alignment. Max's touch did more than bring him back. It flung him lightyears ahead of where he's meant to be, pushing him along an uncharted evolutionary path. Liz's powers manifested three years after Max healed her, and Kyle is only a year behind her. He's silently counting down in his head.
He used to wish that Max would leave. Hell, he used to wish they'd all leave. Without Max to work that damn compulsion on him, he'd be able to get on with his life, live a semi-normal existance. But Max's touch binds Kyle to him doubly over. Those invisible changes under the skin make him almost as interesting to the Feds as the royal four. He and Liz are bound to them now, completely. Slaves in fact, if not in name.
Sometimes Kyle wonders if this is the secret, if this is why Liz suddenly became crazy for a guy she'd barely even talked to before the shooting. Because Max liked her before then, and it is very hard to resist what Max wants. Try impossible. Because what Max wants, Kyle and Liz want too. His needs entwine so intimately with their own, dominating and overriding their impulses, it is difficult to separate them. Kyle is just thankful that Max doesn't like guys. Because he knows, deep down, that he wouldn't be able to say no. Hell, he'd probably be crawling into Max's lap the moment Max so much as glanced in his direction.
Max's hold over Kyle is the very reason he can't tell Max about it. Because Max loves Liz, and he doesn't want to hear the truth that she might not really love him back, that her love is just a reflection of his own.
Loyalty is twined like barbed wire about Kyle's soul, and his mouth is sealed shut.
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