Disclaimer: I do not own any part of this series. Nor am I the intellect behind Bennie's fic Conspiracy.

Summary: Liz always knew a return to Roswell was in the cards. Five years after she left, Fate plucked that one from the deck. AU inspired by 'Conspiracy' (details inside).

Author's Note: This chapter does contain sexual content. Nothing is graphic, but if you feel uncomfortable with reading such, this is your only warning.

Title for this chapter is from the song "9 Crimes" by Damien Rice.

…

A small crime (The wrong kind of place)

…

For nearly an hour, we worked in a hub of activity. Reports filtered through the radio, my coworkers shared information with each other, and I labored to sign papers and sort through data and read every update that passed my way. The front doors remained closed, but when it did open with the light tinkle of a bell I looked up.

Agent Sully entered the café.

I shot to my feet. Vasquez was already at his side, taking his statement. Professional as ever, Sully delivered a bare-bones report while holding a stained rag to his bleeding head. His eyes met mine over Vasquez's shoulder. His jaw was clenched too tightly.

From behind him, two uninjured agents carried between them a man I was not expecting to see. "Alex!" The Antarians directed my agents to lift him onto the counter, the only place long enough to support his entire lanky frame besides the ground.

I should have continued to work, or gone to hear a first-hand account from my injured subordinate. I should have done my best to find answers from others and let them be. But I was selfish.

My steps led me not to Sully, but to Alex. I reached out one hand to grasp his limply dangling one, and the other sought someone else's without conscious direction. It gripped mine just as fiercely. I didn't even think about the action until I looked up and Maria's eyes were on mine, tears trickling over her cheeks, and I slid from holding her hand to wrapping one arm around her body effortlessly.

Maria. The girl I grew up with, the girl who became a woman without me being around to see it, the girl whose hands braided my hair and whose laughter lit my own, who danced during our shifts and sang like a siren.

And Alex, who was with me every step of my life up until five years ago. He was a confidant and a companion, with a whip-crack mind and a heart as wide as the desert and burning twice as hot. The shock of Alex being injured made my ribs feel like they were under a heavy stone.

He couldn't die. I didn't even have him back.

Someone had removed Alex's shirt, leaving us with a clear view of blood-streaked skin, a deep indent bubbling over with dark red. Max's hand pressed over it. I remembered: he was the strongest healer in the Antarian community.

For too long a minute we waited. Without my report I didn't know how long Alex had been injured, how close he was to leaving us, why he had been in the line of fire. I knew gunshot wounds from sight. Had Pierce taken a gun off one of my agents, or were we not thorough enough?

Our mistake. My failure.

Though his condition did not appear to change, Alex's eyelids fluttered, a crack of pale blue flaring against the overhead lights. My knuckles went white over his hand.

Max leaned over him, forcing eye contact, and murmuring, "Focus. Look at me. Stay here, Alex." With each plea came more clarity in Alex's eyes.

When Max lifted his hand away from smooth, un-punctured flesh, I turned my head into Maria's neck. Her hand patted my back soothingly, but slowly.

Her hesitation brought reality back.

Nothing had been discussed, nothing was resolved, and I had made a point to show no weakness up until then. She probably had no clue how to react, now that our shared fear was given relief. I straightened and brushed away tears.

I released Alex's hand, though he reached for it when we were no longer touching. His eyes were wide and soft. "Hey, there," he said, sounding far too weak for my taste.

A small smile cracked my dry lips. I nodded. He blinked at the faces surrounding him, absorbing his change in location.

I was suddenly, sharply aware of Antarians, everyone reaching to one another. A connection between each of them, like a spiderweb connecting person to person, several different hands linking Alex to the others. Physical representations of connection and support. My parents clasped hands and his shoulders, as if he were an adopted son come back to the fold. My friends each touched some part of him and each other: hands entwined, on forearms, around waists. It was beautiful.

And I was excluded from the web.

It was like seeing exactly what drove me from home.

I dropped my arm from Maria. "An agent will come by to take your statement," I said. "Excuse me."

There were protests. My name was called.

I didn't turn my back out of spite. Not out of wounded feelings, bruised pride, or misplaced teenage angst.

I walked away because I remembered why I was in Roswell.

I grabbed Sully by the shoulder and shoved him into a chair. "Agent Sully," I said conversationally, whipping the rag off his head. A grunt worker bee began examining the wound. Brave girl, getting so close to this confrontation. "Why the fuck do I have a dead alien and two dead agents?"

He recited what Vasquez had already taken down. Deciding time was of the essence, he plotted a direct path instead of going round-about. In a remote area between houses on a long stretch of road, Pierce slipped the cuffs and hit Sully on the back of the head. Sully swerved into a ditch and his skull bounced off the steering wheel. Pierce snatched the gun from Grath, shot him and Halper, and smashed their cells and radios.

When he regained consciousness, Sully found Alex and an older woman a mile down the road as he ran for a call box. The woman insisted that Sully make it to the phone box and come back to help them. She was applying pressure to Alex's wound when he resumed running. She fell unconscious before Sully returned. By the time the medics arrived, she was simply too weak.

"Did her hair have red streaks?" I asked.

"Yes, actually."

Alex's grandmother. She liked it because she said it reminded her of the ocean. I never understood until Larek told me that the ocean on Antar had shimmered ruby-red. Sometimes she and Alex would take walks together, long ones between her house and her neighbor's.

She liked to walk. Loved to see the stars.

I told Sully to get some rest and obey the doctors. Clapped him on the shoulder. And got back to work.

When the sun sank beyond the horizon, I stood and looked out the window.

The streetlights were just starting to cast a weary yellow glow on nearly empty streets. SUVs passed at the end of the block. Some men were stationed on foot, especially near our base of operations, and many bustling emergency workers were using this street as their own headquarters with tents, super-white lights, and folding tables. Further out, in widening patterns, my people searched for the bombs Pierce dragged into my peaceful little hometown. And out in the desert somewhere, Pierce was planning his next move.

Most of the Antarians trickled out, Alex included. Maria helped take him to the back of the Crashdown, and probably up the stairs to my parent's living area. I didn't look up when Max and Isabel left. Michael dragged himself out a half-hour later. I vaguely registered Tess and Kyle sitting at the counter, likely the council members who volunteered to stay with Safeguard for the night shift.

And now I studied the sky through the café glass. The stars were just starting to appear in the sky.

They burned so brightly. Even the light pollution of the city couldn't completely block them out. I wondered which one was theirs, the star they could never return to, the home they had left behind.

Maybe I didn't inherit my need to run: maybe it had passed down through them to me, through some alien connection. I couldn't remember if they had always seemed like a sedentary community, or if a lingering wildness bubbled under the surface. If a nomadic desire ran through their veins, an exploratory past echoing in the way they looked at the horizon and taught me to see.

Or did I just wish that I still had a connection to these people?

I stood at the window long enough that when a mug of coffee tentatively pushed at my arm, I startled. Wiping a hand over my face, I slipped my hand around it mechanically. "Thank you," I said, before looking at the person who handed it to me.

My mother. Her face was so tired. I had never seen her look like this before.

Ignoring her over these hours in Roswell was hard. All my effort came crumbling down when she was a foot away from me. I couldn't repress the rush of anger, the swell of pain, the bitter joy and the sweet sadness.

Her lips pressed then parted. "You're welcome." So long, since I heard her speak last—the tone of bells clung to her vowels, staccato syllables caressing my ear.

Stiffness was unnatural to us. This was the woman I always considered my mother. "How are you doing?" I asked.

Her chin wavered. "Good," she almost-whispered, cleared her throat. "We'll get through this," she added, stronger.

"We'll pay," I said, hesitated, adjusted my grip on the mug. "I mean, for your assistance. Thank you for allowing my agents to take over the café. Your business will be compensated for your efforts."

She waved her hand. "It's the least we can do." Her eyes misted. "It's good to see you here again."

I blinked rapidly to clear my sight of her freckled face, her brilliant hair, that loving smile. "Yeah," I murmured. Then, slipping on the end of a breath past any semblance of professionalism, I added, "I missed you, Mom."

Spillover. A droplet rolled down her cheek from the outer corner of her eye. She nodded, too overcome by some strong emotion to speak.

Abruptly, I realized that if their distance had an effect on me, then my distance also had consequences. They had their reasons for keeping me in the dark. But my anger and hurt only kept me out of the loop of their love. My leaving tore a hole in the walls of their hearts.

I left because I felt unloved and secluded and tired. And maybe they played a role in that, because of all the secrets layered between us, keeping me at a distance. They probably didn't understand that I left for me. I left because I couldn't stand a distance I did not understand.

Not because—never because—I didn't love them.

My parents, my friends, Max, even the extended community of Roswell, all had a place in my heart.

This was hardly the time to say the words. Not the right location, either. There was a lot to accomplish, and I couldn't let myself fall into my mother's arms. Not yet. The moment I did, I'd have to let all my walls down, relax my careful control. And I could not afford that until Pierce was no longer a threat.

I made a promise to myself, though. Smiling tentatively at my mother, sharing a quiet moment with her, I told myself that I would tell all of Roswell that I loved them.

If only by protecting them to my last breath.

Hours later, Vasquez reminded me of the time and my standing instructions for rotation. I turned over our established base to the night shift fresh from naptime. Our organization had taken a motel best suited for our purposes. My tired, weary workers took their leave.

Of the Antarian audience, only Kyle, Tess, and my mother still lingered at the counter.

My choice: leave without a professional word of courtesy, or avoid repeating the past. No choice.

Vasquez waited at the door, tapping her toes against the tile. I nodded to Kyle and Tess, spoke to my mother. "These second-shift agents will continue working through the night. We'll switch out again in the morning if necessary. I advise you all to get some rest."

My mother smiled blandly, as if patronizing my latest kitchen experiment. "We'll keep the coffee coming," she said.

I wished in my weakness for a hug and clung to the cuffs of my suit jacket. Her eyes were large pools, the faint dusting of freckles standing dark against her pale skin. Weariness lined her face.

As I turned to leave, Tess slid off the high counter stool. The light from the kitchen lit her from behind. In an instant she appeared regal to me, more than a classmate from high school. "You aren't stopping now." Not a command, not a question.

I gestured with the folders in my hands. "I don't need all the resources here."

"So you have everything you need?" One pale eyebrow arched.

My mother remained silent. Kyle glanced between the two of us. I shifted back on my heels, seeing the twitch of calculation in her lips. "Yes. If there's nothing else," I said, "I'll be on my way."

Tess waved a hand, a gentle dismissal. "We all need a little bit of sleep tonight." A faint up-twitch of her lips. I hesitated, but couldn't think of an explanation for the faint unease in the back of my mind. Her words were innocuous enough: why was I reading into them so much? We barely spoke over the years we attended school together. Maybe that was why it seemed like an iceberg loomed, just out of sight.

I left the Crashdown as quietly as I had the last time.

The former queen had reassumed a position of authority and, in the absence of Max, made decisions for Antarian matters. I didn't know how to feel about her clear resumption of the throne.

Larek told me that she was enamored of life as a human teenager, which caused conflict and the eventual dissolution of her marriage. Max was unable to give up his responsibilities and let their relationship peacefully dissolve.

These questions played in my mind:

How did he feel for her, when he seemed interested in me? Would Pierce's intrusion lead to the end of their separation?

Or had it already?

Vasquez accompanied me to my motel room, a second-story mid-row cube at a cheap place halfway to the outskirts of town. She dropped files on the table and eyed equipment which had been carted in by one of my teams. "Need help setting up that junk?" she asked.

"I would appreciate it."

We remained mostly silent while we worked. She knew that I wasn't going to get much—if any—shut-eye. She knew that I needed time away from our base of operations. She knew I needed food—one of our lackeys brought in a large loaded pizza as we set up the wall of evidence—and she also knew that I couldn't be alone in my room. Not right now.

Not until the security detail cleared the immediate area and established a perimeter.

Because Pierce would never be able to penetrate the Crashdown without crossing some serious lines of defense, it was a relatively safe area. The motel was not out in the middle of the desert, but it was off-set from the center of town. It wasn't as defensible. And my past history with Pierce, his desperation, and his abilities, made me a tempting target.

Bait.

She knew and the Director knew and I knew about the plan.

Vasquez and I had worked it out on paper as she brought me reports and documents today. She set it in motion while I was under the assessing eyes of Antarians and agents under my command. The motel was completely covered, with a constructed hole Pierce could access. Every angle was covered. If he made a move, they would wait and close the trap on him before he could reach my room.

Larek agreed only because it was a slim chance. Being bait depended on Pierce knowing my movements. If he came, we would know there were moles in our organization. Though Director Larek was certain of his abilities, I wanted to be absolutely certain.

If Pierce came, we had more problems than my possible peril.

I changed out of my suit. Pajama pants and a tank top were a release from the role and position defining me. My wardrobe change exposed the scar on my arm and the bruise on my shoulder, my unpolished bare feet and loosely wavy hair. I figured I might as well be comfortable.

Vasquez and I settled, spread papers over tables and one of the beds. Pens in hand, radio low, pizza slowly disappearing, we worked on what we could. We made small decisions that she would radio in before sleeping. We sat in silence—until.

A knock.

The door wobbled in the frame. "Heavy hand," Vasquez commented. Her own lingered over the pistol strapped to her thigh.

I scratched at my arm, trying to avoid catching my fingernails on scar tissue. "Think the graveyard shift got anywhere?"

"Maybe. They'd be working hard if we're sticking with the deadline of 'tomorrow'." I avoided meeting her eyes as I rose from my chair. Her quiet knowledge was sometimes difficult when I wanted nothing more than to hide. Had I been blatant about my discomfort, despite trying to achieve total professionalism?

No use worrying over it. "It will take as long as it takes," I said, reaching for the doorknob. "It's not up to me." I opened it. "HQ might want us on-site—"

Max shifted from one foot to the other.

He lowered his knocking-hand and slipped it into his pocket, the crease between his eyebrows wavering between shallow and deep. My stomach felt as wobbly as the door. Any possible greeting escaped me.

From her comfortable seat, Vasquez called, "Should I add your recommendation to the Director's update?"

I was a breath too long for the natural rhythm of a conversation. "Yes."

Yellowed light-bulbs illuminated his profile from the side. It cast a shine to his dark hair, shadowed his eyes a hint too darkly. His chin was tilted at a stubborn angle, but his eyes gazed behind me, from one side to the other, and caught on something. The faintest blush covered his cheeks.

I reviewed my mental map of the dingy motel room. Pizza box open on the small table, to the right of a desk scattered with papers and file folders, a haphazard assemblage of pinned pictures and scraps on the wall above it. On the opposite wall, in full view of the door, a tiny radio buzzed a low-volume stream of background hits on the bedside table between two queen-size, slightly rumpled beds. Between the table and the nightstand was a gap, through which was access to the tiny bathroom with neatly-folded towels, robe, and a suitcase stuffed under the sink.

Vasquez moved. I turned to see her sit on the furthest bed, where piles of equipment rested in semi-order. She had the field phone in her hands and rifled through a bag near the headboard. A subtle nudge (he couldn't be allowed to listen to a classified conversation).

Max backed all the way to the railing when I stepped closer, as though chasing him from my room. I closed the door, arms folded behind my back and grasping the handle. The distance of the walkway gaped between us.

Outside was quiet. The faint hums of insect life in the bushes, a car engine a street over, the buzz of electricity. Those sounds fell away even as I met his gaze.

Max's eyes were human-dark. But as he rested his palms on the railing behind him, the shadows around him seemed to intensify. Undercurrents pushed at our boundaries.

"Do you need something?" My voice seemed too loud.

"I needed—" His shoulders tensed. "I wanted to ask you something, Agent."

No prepared speech, no squared shoulders. Instead of pushing now that we were alone, he kept to titles instead of names.

Somehow Max suddenly seemed so alien. The boy I knew five years ago would have been boiling underneath, had always seemed to have many more words than those actually released. This version of him was the cool, collected king of a refugee people, meeting a representative of their sanctuary's government. This man was not going to demand that conversation we put off once we were alone.

I folded my arms in front of my stomach. "What is it? I've told you everything I know about the case."

"Not quite," he said. A muscle in his jaw twitched. "Tell me about Pierce."

Brushing loose hair from my face, I reminded him, "We are doing the best we can. My agents are some of the most capable people in their fields. We will find him."

He shook his head. "That's reassuring, but I meant from our first conversation in city hall. You told Michael and me most of the story," he said. "But you held something back. I would like to know what it was."

A personal conversation with professional distance—was it meant to put me off-balance?

It was working. "Why do you think that?"

"Agent," he said, looking at the ground. He scuffed one heel on the bottom of the railing. "My second-in-command pays very close attention to details. He was suspicious about some wording you used, and the method of conversation between yourself and one of your lead agents." He nodded to the door behind my back. "Additionally, there's the matter of removing yourself from your established base into a less secure area." He looked over his shoulder at the parking lot below. "That's either a thoughtless mistake or a calculated risk."

I knew he paid attention, for himself and for his people, as a ruler and as an intelligent person. And still I underestimated him.

"I can't force you not to do dangerous things. I can't control you. I know that now," he said. My shoulder-blades scrunched together at the slippage. Yet instead of pushing into personal territory, again he maneuvered back from the edge. "But for the sake of Roswell as the place my people take refuge, I need to know what you're hiding about that makes you so tempting a target."

Being close to him made it hard to think. I edged sideways, a few feet, just enough to feel the night air on my skin.

"I told you I was undercover in his department. It's not much more than that." Again, it felt like a lie. Maybe because what I had wanted was different. "He was my mentor." I turned to the parking lot and looked up at the stars. "He was my friend. I thought." I cleared my throat. "And I thought he could be trusted. I was wrong." My words rang like a bad echo.

Without the façade of a work-related conversation, it would have been much harder to tell the story. Weird enough telling it to a man who once told me that he loved me. Stranger still to recall a brief hero-worship crush. A crush I never acted upon, that died the more I learned about him—but, something which did exist for a time. A distraction from memories of a boy in a hometown I didn't want to remember.

Maybe he could hear what I buried underneath the facts. Maybe he could hear it in my voice, feel it from me. His voice was gruff. "What did you trust him with?"

I knew what he probably suspected. But it wasn't sex.

I had reasons to stay away from Roswell after I joined Safeguard.

I had killed. And I might have made a crucial mistake.

Like it was perfectly planned, we were interrupted by my motel room door.

Vasquez stepped out. I met her eyes over Max's shoulder. She didn't seem to notice his stiff posture or the angle of my body. "I'll check in with the patrol and call it a night, ma'am," she said.

"Dismissed, agent." She turned her back to us and walked away.

I scanned the parking lot below. Vasquez did have duties to perform, but I thought that she suspected our talk was taking a turn for the personal. And I appreciated her subtle release of space, but I didn't want to retreat from this conversation.

Although she was barely out hearing range, I did not halt my tongue. "You have reason to hate me." I willingly cracked my professional boundary.

"Liz—"

And he tore the rest of it down in a single syllable. As if knowing intuitively that the conversation we had cut off in city hall could no longer be subdued.

Here and now was better than before, possibly the best time we would have. He deserved to hear it, and I deserved to say it.

"I don't begrudge you that. Maybe, in a sick way, I suppose I now understand why I was always an outsider." I braced my hands against the railing. "I think of Roswell as home. Still call Mom and Dad my parents. But Roswell's not really mine. It's Antar's." A rough smile curled my lips.

Gentle as the desert breeze, he said, "If you think of Roswell as home, then it's yours. And it always will be. We still want you with us."

Even though I made the decision to open this conversation to my brutal revelation, it took time to get my words in order.

So I told him things that had festered inside of me. "For a long time before I left, I thought there a conspiracy to keep me out. I couldn't understand why no one trusted me."

"We did. We do." His voice was so sharp my head turned. He came closer. "Liz, I wish I knew how to fix what I did wrong. I wish so many things that I know I won't get but I swear to you, if you believe nothing else that I say, it was never about our trust in you."

Larek told me the same. To hear it here, from him, dug deeper than anything else and burned like a hot coal in my chest. I didn't know how to answer. I remembered the last time he looked at me so intensely and—"I never explained why I left."

He shook his head. "Because we failed you."

The defeat in his voice jolted me: he wasn't thinking in plural. "You didn't fail me."

Right on my wavelength, his eyes colored with old hurt. "But you didn't believe me. And you didn't feel the same way."

I shook my head, turned away from the railing, towards him. "Declarations of love are hard enough when you're a normal person. And despite however much you learn about people, you're still Antarian. You form different types of bonds. Types a human just doesn't."

His head dipped as if I had scolded. "Shallow empathy. It's not invasive. It's like an extra sense."

I nodded. "Humans can feel a lot of things, but we aren't connected like that."

The tension in his jaw softened. "Maria thought of that. Because they knew I felt—" he waved a hand between us. "But somehow we missed the simple fact that you couldn't receive our vibes."

"I thought of that, when I found out about you all. But by then I couldn't come back." He flinched. It was slight, but it was there. I winced. "Not like—"

"It's okay." But his shoulders were angling back towards the parking lot, chin tucked towards his chest.

I saw defeat in the line of his back. And I couldn't let him hurt like that.

For the first time, I reached out and touched his arm.

His skin felt so warm under my fingertips. A T-shirt in the cool night air, as bad a choice as my tank top, just as clearly indicating he hadn't expected to be in the desert night. Dark eyes met mine.

"I had things to do before I came back," I said. "Back then, if you made me stay I would have shriveled. You couldn't keep me, not as the girl I used to be." The words I thought long ago came back to me. "You can lock a person up and keep their body there, but in the end that's all you're going to have. A body." My eyes slid to the parking lot, empty of most vehicles except for his and mine. "I needed to breathe alone for a while. I needed out from your protection to find my own strength."

"And you did." His hand came up to cover my own. "You're different. I always knew you would change when the human world influenced you." He ducked his head slightly, the faintest flush of shame coloring his cheeks. "For a long time, I mourned. I thought you'd lose everything that made you Liz. Another of my failures." I opened my mouth to argue and he pushed on, eager to get the words out. "But this was a good change. I've never seen you so confident, so determined. At peace with yourself." His expression was so soft, so open. "Maybe it's selfish, but I wish I could have helped you get there."

Some strange joy lit up inside of me, some pressure to release a little more. So I confessed, "When I wanted to go to college, I never meant to leave and never return. I applied to universities in the state, planned for weekend visits and holidays and maybe with a degree, come back to do research on desert flora and fauna." A faint smile twitched at my lips. "What I wanted was time and freedom before I could commit."

So free. I felt like I could fly if I stepped off the railing beside us.

"I should have listened," he said. He glanced to the empty lot, as if by habit he had to scan for danger. I didn't bother to tell him there were security teams in the area: he probably knew that already. "You said before I'm not a king here. Our community is so insular, it gets us all a little stuck to our old lives. Tess was able to move on. I don't have that luxury. I have memories of a lifetime being raised to rule." My thumb rubbed a circle on his arm. "But being here makes me feel as young as you are in some ways. I should have remembered that humans have different needs. I should have realized that I can't control another person." A self-deprecating smile flickered over his lips. "I should have figured out you couldn't receive our vibes."

A forgotten sensation… "I think I did, though." His head tilted to one side. "Peripherally, not consciously. Even when I was convinced of a conspiracy and hurt the most, I never felt unsafe. I never felt like there was malevolent intent. I was just so hurt that I wasn't deemed trustworthy. And that others seemed to think they could control my life without any input from me."

He winced and his hands came up to cup my biceps. "We were wrong to keep so many choices from you, but it was never about trust, Liz. It was—it was complicated, at first you were just a baby, and then you were growing up and human children are notoriously bad secret keepers, and then you were older and I just wanted you to be happy and safe and if you never had to know that we lied or that there was danger—"

Oh. How could I forget?

"But you were right." I stepped back.

His eyes flashed. "Is this about Pierce?" Reaching towards me, he stopped when I stepped back. "Liz, whatever you think is so horrible, I can promise you that we will not hate you." And for an instant, an alien darkness invaded his eyes. "I could never hate you."

Maybe that should have scared me a little, but I had come to realize that very strong emotion, when Max wasn't completely controlling himself, riled up a side of him I had never seen before. I didn't feel threatened or scared by it, though.

My confession was what scared me. On my third inhale, I told him.

"As we got closer, and went out into the field together, Pierce and I talked about more personal things. I told him that, growing up in Roswell, I felt like an alien." A faintly hysterical laugh bubbled in my throat and I swallowed it. "I never explained it, any lie works best based off of a truth and I told him it was silly teen angst, but Ma—Zan," I corrected myself. "I think I made him curious enough to look."

If it were my fault that Pierce came here…

…I didn't know how to process. The thought had rotted away inside my skull for over a week.

Whatever reaction came from him, I just knew I deserved it.

I didn't know what to expect. My stomach felt full of pop rocks and Coke.

But he stepped towards me and I couldn't step away—what right did I have to step away? He stepped right into my personal space and I didn't feel intimidated. I only felt protected. Were these the mysterious vibes I had never known I felt? Was that why, even looming over me with every reason to be angry, I felt completely safe?

Then I saw the relaxed lines around his mouth, and the soft corners of his eyes. He lifted one hand to my shoulder. "You don't know that."

Why was he not telling me they were right all along to keep me in the dark? "I—"

"Even if," he interrupted me, "Pierce took anything you said as reason to look at us, that doesn't change what I said. It doesn't change how I feel about you."

I knew the Max of high school had feelings for me, the Max of five years ago had confessed love for me, and that I couldn't deny my own attraction to him.

The Max of now was a wholly different being. Maybe I was differentiating too strongly between the person he was throughout my entire life and who he must have, might have, become in my absence. Whether true or false, there had to be a difference. How could he feel the same way after all the time we spent apart, thinking we would never see each other face to face again? Thinking that we would never know about the other?

I had adjusted more during my time with Larek because I worked through the truth. And I knew myself well enough to know that, perhaps, I could someday love this man.

This man who was not my captor, but my ally.

He looked at me. And I looked at him.

I saw the shades of silver in the edges of his iris, a tell-tale flicker that emotions were right under the surface, that he was only human-eyed for now. If we pushed on I would see more of that consuming pupil. He stood so close I could feel the heat of his body—and I could feel that my body was reacting.

The last time I felt like this around him, I ended up grinding on his lap. While the encounter had ended in my decisive departure from Roswell, the sense memory was hardly negative. My heart sped. His eyes flickered to my neck, to my collarbone and sternum, dragging up to my lips, the tip of my nose, my eyes.

His pupils blew all the way over the iris. It was fascinating to watch from this range. Time slowed to let me see. The darkness lingered at the edges, not quite to the whites of his eyes, lingering on the precipice of totally consuming his human appearance. I doubted he was aware of it. I wouldn't have seen his dark eyes grow so much darker if not for our proximity.

The silence had lingered after he spoke.

Until I gathered my courage. Until I asked, "How do you feel, Zan?"

"My name," he said, stern, yet in contradiction, breathless, "is Max." The backs of his fingers brushed the skin of my arm. "Liz." Pointedly.

I could practically feel the warmth of his breath mingling with mine. Goosebumps rose on my arms—not from the cool night air, but from the repetitious brush of his fingers on my skin.

The thought flashed through my mind that this was probably not a good idea. In a vague effort to recreate space, the first thing I could think to say was, "We agreed to postpone this conversation."

"We've already been having it." One corner of his mouth twitched. The rumpled hairs that flopped across his forehead brushed mine.

"I just need control, Zan. Max." Which name? I swallowed. "I need…" A nudge of fingertips on my other arm, a gentle brushing motion towards him. It was careful, unexpected, and my resistance waned.

"You haven't been in control since you arrived," he said. Our foreheads were touching, no more space. "I've been watching you. You know that. I can tell when you feel me watching you." He nodded, a tiny movement which moved my head with his.

"Oh?"

Such a pointless response, but he responded with noise of his own. "Mmhm." My heart beat against my ribs, feeling black and blue but not done yet, exhilarated by the sensation of my hand on his chest. I could feel some truly wonderful muscles. "You've been projecting. So many emotions. It's unusual but common under stress."

"Stress does some crazy things to people." My eyelids flickered. "And people do some crazy things." He smelled like I remembered in the car. So long ago, in that Jeep, I had no inhibitions. Why was I trying to stop now?

"Yeah?" Questioning tone, pushing at more than my replies, more than the way my hand was sliding up to his collar and a few hot inches separated our entire bodies.

Though his eyes were so close to mine, one last flutter of my eyelashes caught how the whites of his eyes were nearly eclipsed.

"Yeah." That was it. "Max—"

I cut myself off when my arm slipped around the back of his neck, skimming hot skin and thick cotton, and I pulled myself up towards his lips. Or he cut me off when his arms slid down from my elbows and wrapped around my back, my waist, pulling me up towards him.

Either way. Our lips met.

After that, things were a haze: stars behind my eyelids; the thin railing against my lower back, then under my hips; warm skin under my fingertips and thick hair twisted closer to my knuckles; his hands branding heat to my thighs, my back, my face; the insistent press and scorch between my legs as they drew his hips closer.

I remember that he lifted me away from the railing. I spared a brief thought for my security, but they would maintain their positions and couldn't see us anyway. My back pressed to the stucco wall outside my room and I recalled that I did not have my key, wondered vaguely with Max's lips on my throat how Vasquez expected me to get back in without one. But his hand removed support from the back of my thigh and he touched the door and I remembered what he could do.

Then I didn't care anymore, letting my legs fall from around his waist to back into my room, tugging him along by the shirt collar. He came willingly, our lips never far apart. I used his weight to shut the door, pressing him back as I worked at the hem of his shirt, eager to feel more skin under my hands and against my own.

We ended up on the bed as some point. We ended up slick skin on skin, sweat and panting and moans. His thick fingers stretching me open, making me cry out and writhe against his body. My fingers stroking him to an unexpected climax, his teeth sinking into my shoulder as his muscles clenched in rippling waves. We wound our bodies, came together again and again: his chest to my back, his body spread out beneath me, mine arching up into his.

And when we settled after hours of very personal interaction, I drifted to sleep curled close to his chest.

When I woke the lingering pre-dawn had just shifted to sunrise. Strips of wall glimmered red, filtering through sheer white curtains.

For a long minute, I lay in bed and let my brain catch up to the good ache of a well-used body. Let my senses spread around the room, cataloguing the scents and sounds of the space. The still-warm sheets beside me, unoccupied.

My eyes cracked open. Underneath strands of tossed-about hair, I peered at a man standing by the sink. He had pulled boxers on. I could see red streaks along his shoulder-blades. Evidence of my loss of control.

As I watched, he scooped a handful of water from the sink and rubbed his face. When he lifted his head, he didn't look in the mirror. Max turned and walked between the second bed and my mind-blurt wall. He paused, head tilted as he studied it.

I wasn't sure what I felt, but I knew that his clothes were closer to the door. He had easy access to them if he kept walking in a straight line. Regardless: "That's classified."

Neither of us winced at my ill-used voice. No hint of a startle showed on his face. I pushed myself up, tugging a sheet modestly along with me. Though I saw only tenderness, I had to add, "Planning on a quick getaway?"

My shoulders relaxed when, eyes warm and faint smile turning up his lips, Max sat on the edge of my bed. Hips parallel to mine, he leaned over and engaged me in a gentle kiss.

It quickly turned from chaste to deep, as I slipped a hand around the back of his head and tugged him over, laying back down an inch at a time. He shifted along with me, body quickly lining up with mine atop the sheets. When he finally broke the kiss, it was only to place more along my jaw. My hands went to his back, brushing along the nail tracks I had left behind.

A throat-shallow sound came from him at the motion of my hands. "Why don't you heal them?" I suggested. He lifted his head. I saw that pain was not the cause of that sound. "Oh," I said, raising an eyebrow. "Interesting."

His fingers trailed down my sternum and I shivered. "Going Vulcan on me?" he teased. "You know more adjectives than that." The swiftly-blown pupil told me that he was in a playful mood, and definitely also in an adult mood—as if the slowly-driving-me-crazy grinding hadn't already made the point.

"Not at the moment," I managed. One of my hands cupped his cheek, stroking the skin under one fully alien-black eye.

The motion must have suggested it, because he quickly closed his eyes and ducked his head, the motion of his hips stuttering. That answered the question of whether he was aware of the possibility, though not necessarily without someone else pointing out that it had happened.

I bucked my hips and, catching him by surprise, rolled him to his back. He gasped, and froze when I leaned down, cupping his face in my hands. "Don't hide from me." The sheet had fallen between us, now covering him instead of me. "I saw your eyes plenty last night."

His smile was sheepish, mixed with lustful. I sighed as his hands stroked my now-exposed skin and I let my head fall back, hands trailing down his chest as I sat back, enjoying the sensation against my core. I rocked slightly, letting him ease into that thought.

He sat up. I smiled when our eyes met again, smiled as he kissed me and adjusted me over him, helping shove at the sheet between us until it fell away, reshuffling our positions until his boxers were gone, too. I locked eyes with him in the early morning light, allowing myself not to look away even when the intensity of his length impaling me threatened to have me throw my head back. Even when he drove into me and the muscles in my legs quivered. Even when our foreheads clunked together and pressed, helping both of us hold on to that much needed visual connection until finally, I simply couldn't keep my eyes open under the force of my climax.

But by then, the point was made—and by then, his lips on my neck easing my way back down, I knew there was pleasure in seeing me lose control like that. I liked it just as much when I got him to that point, felt powerful. Felt alive. Felt love.

We settled against the pillows. A tiny part of my brain kept reminding me that I was cuddling with an alien. And as captivated as I was by everything we were doing the night before, I had remained aware that there was something about the experience that went beyond fantastic. Explosive.

It was celestial.

Was that an alien thing? I felt emotions which matched mine so clearly, yet somehow I knew that they were not my own. Saw images of stars and a red sea, a planet glowing with vitality and then, as if in a nightmare, withering to decay. Creatures, or beings, with all the classical or typical appearance of aliens: domed head, pointed chin, giant black eyes, small thin bodies. They were all different shades of a thriving, vibrant gray.

None of this was mine. But it matched stories from Larek.

"Max." I shifted my head against his chest, peeking up at him. He hummed in response. "Did you—when we—did you happen to see anything?"

He stilled. Not frozen, but there was an expectant quiet about his limbs. His thumb ceased stroking my upper arm. "Like what?"

Haltingly, trying to find the words, I told him about the red ocean. The dying planet. "And I think—I think I saw what your people looked like," I finished. My fingers tapped restlessly on his chest. "Was that all from you?"

"Probably." His voice sounded slightly hoarse. I lifted my head, looking down at him. A small crease had formed between his eyebrows.

"What is it?" I could see words dancing in his head.

He bit his lip, but told me despite his half-hearted effort to hold it in. "I don't want you to think I regret this. I don't. But it probably wasn't the best decision to make so quickly."

For a moment, I didn't understand. And it hurt a little. But then, I had already thought of several reasons it was a bad idea (I was bait, Pierce was still not captured, we were both in the middle of a very stressful time in Roswell's existence). In addition… "You didn't know that would happen. None of you have ever—?"

"Not with humans," he said. The crease of worry on his forehead deepened. "I should have been more careful."

"We should have," I corrected him, an internal wince as I thought of what we did not use. I was on birth control to regulate my cycle. But condoms prevented different things. "For the record, I don't regret this either. But I understand what you mean." I rested my chin on his chest. "We'll deal with any consequences which come from this kind of contact."

He sighed, nodded, but the crease only faded a little. His fingers traced the scar on my arm absently—at least, until he looked down at it. Then the caress was deliberate. "Work-related?" he asked.

"One of my less-organized early missions," I told him. "It was the first time I went into the field alone. Training can only take you so far."

His fingers travelled over the rough patch of my elbow, to my shoulder, down to my side, to my hip. It paused on a long-faded half-circle, a rough reminder of playground days. "Third grade," I said with a smile.

"I remember." When he saw my widened eyes, his cheeks flushed pink. "I wanted to heal it. I couldn't, though, that would have been…unpredictable."

"Not the best way to keep your cover of totally-normal-human."

He shook his head. "True, but more the fact that I have no idea what effect our energy might have on a human body." My smile gentled, and then faded when his eyes grew humanly dark. "Liz, be careful," he pleaded.

"I always try to be," I said. "Hey." I tapped my fingers on his chest. "No matter what happens to me in the field, I never want you to think you should have been able to protect me."

"If there was something I could have done, I'd never forgive myself for not trying."

I looked at him for a long minute. Did I trust him? Did I think that he would do anything in his power not to hurt me, accidentally? Did I believe that the unknown consequences were worth it?

No question about it.

"I trust your judgment." The flickering wonder in his eyes showed his understanding. "I think I can handle any consequences if you're beside me."

His arm, wrapped around my body, pulled me closer.

Eventually we had to return to reality.

He showered. I dressed, my usual slacks and button-up, sleeves dangling loose and brushing my hair back with my fingers. When he came out of the bathroom, his clothes looked starched and clean. I raised an eyebrow in the mirror, toothbrush moving in circles over my teeth.

Max lifted a hand in answer. I smiled around the bristles, then leaned over and spit into the sink. When I straightened again, I pretended not to feel the heat of his eyes on my lower back and hips. Instead, I started buttoning my sleeves and turned.

One all too brief kiss, pushed back against the sink counter, then I slipped on my suit jacket and we left the room together.