Title: Before It Rains

Name: Pilar

Fandom: Roswell

Pairing: Michael/Max

Summary: A storm is brewing, and Michael surrenders to the call of leadership.

Rating: NC-17, Slash

Distribution: All list-archives and archives to whom I've sent this directly, anyone else, please ask.

Disclaimer: As much as I would love to say that they're all mine, they're just not. All I own are my own plot bunnies.

Feedback: Love it, need it, worship it. Please send it. But if I find homophobic crap in my inbox, I will be forced to delete it and ignore you once again. Just don't, I'm over it.

BEFORE IT RAINS

By Pilar

Max Evans burns in my mind, burns on my skin, sears my cold flesh.

My leader. My lover.

It had never been like this, one day I couldn't look at him any more, I had stopped feeling sorry for all of his melodrama and all of his whiney bullshit and the next, I had started dreaming about him.

I remember the first dream. That afternoon, he had been at my apartment and had yelled at me for doing something else that was wrong or against his primary directive or whatever he wanted to call things. I had been so angry with him, I had spent the remainder of the afternoon pacing my floor until I was surprised that there wasn't a trail worn into the shitty carpet.

And I didn't know why I was so fucking upset.

Max was always angry at me and he always raised his voice. And this time was no different. But this time, something stirred in me as I watched his chest puff and the veins bulge in his neck and his forearms flex as he clenched his fists.

And it made me angry that I was looking. And angrier still that he knew.

Later that night, I had the dream.

The sky was black and we were alone, the desert stretched out before us like a blanket. More than enough space to move around, but together we only took up less than a square foot of ground. His strong arms wrapped around my waist and I could feel the hard girth of his cock pressed beside mine.

I woke up in a shudder and a haze, the sheets beneath me wet and dark. My hand formed a fist and I punched a hole through the sheet rock behind my couch and mended it with a focused wave of my hand. But first, I stared into it to burn the memory into my eyes and solidify its reasoning.

But the wrong memory remained. All I could think about was what it felt like to finally have his arms around me. And when he showed up back in my apartment and asked for forgiveness, I couldn't help but touch him.

It was an innocent touch, the palm of my hand laid firmly upon the sinew of his arm, but the rush of remembrance and the scorching force that ran through me was enough to surprise us both. I couldn't speak. And he didn't.

My eyes fell to the floor, to the stained brown carpet and my bare feet. It was Max who closed the acreage between us and moved his arms around my limp body pulling me into him. I could feel the tremor of my heart against his chest and I closed my eyes, my head fitting perfectly into the juncture of his neck and shoulder.

"I'm sorry, Michael. I didn't mean to get so upset, it wasn't fair." No one had ever held me so tightly and no words had ever meant so much.

"No, Max..." I didn't know what I was disagreeing with, but I wanted him to know that I wasn't upset with him, I wanted him to be sure that I was always on his side.

My leader.

His hand fit to the base of my spine, his arms wrapped around me; maybe we were both afraid to let go. I didn't want him to let go. My hot breath was on his throat, I knew that if I moved too slowly I would lift my head and have to see into his eyes. And I was terrified of what I would see and what that might make me do.

I've always been a man of impulse and my impulses were running strong and fighting against each other. Push him away, put your lips to his, run.

But still his arms held me close and his hand caressed my back. Part of me wanted to cry, the other part wanted to hurt us both.

When I felt his grip loosen, I took a tentative step away from him and nodded gently. I had no idea what I was trying to say, most of me was just sad that I wasn't in his embrace any longer and I didn't know how I should feel about that, or whether I should feel anything at all.

There was an awkward moment between us where neither of us knew what to say.

As he silently turned to leave, I reached out for his shoulder and turned him back to me. "I'm sorry, too." I said it quietly, I didn't want him to leave without hearing it though. It was an apology for everything. Even the things he didn't know about.

And then he took off, leaving me standing alone in the center of my apartment noticing the icy air circling around me and wondering if there was ever any warmth here in the first place. Or if alone meant cold and always had.

I've always done so well with alone and it was unsettling that Max had taken that from me then. Or maybe, I had never been as comfortable as I thought. Maybe I didn't know anything anymore.

I avoided him like the plague for two full days after that night. I kept to myself -- talking to almost no one; I spent lunches in the corner of the quad behind a tree near the track and hoped to the clouds that he wouldn't come looking for me. It's hard to stay away for too long before they start to think something is wrong. I just wanted to regain alone without it feeling so empty.

If you push something deep into the pit of your brain, you can nearly pretend it's not there. It didn't help that in the time that I didn't see him in front of my eyes, I could still see him every minute of every day behind them.

I was dreaming about him even when I was awake and the dreams were becoming longer and more involved. They felt tangible, like reality, for whatever that is worth.

I seem to always wake up just as my mind wanders towards the good part. Maybe that's a reminder that I'm still terrified of him. Terrified of myself. Terrified of what might happen between us, real and in the dream. I'm beginning to wonder where one ends and the other begins.

* * * * * *

"Maxwell."

I stood over him in his bedroom, the only light coming from the street lamp outside his window. I had been lying in my bed, the television flickering in my eyes and casting long shadows over my head, when I thought about him for the millionth time and I knew that I had to see him.

The waiting hours were over. I couldn't linger any longer waiting for him to be the one to seek me out, I needed to do it myself. One of us would have to make a move and Max had never been one to take too many risks. One per lifetime, it seemed.

Me? I'm all about risk. At least that's what I think.

So I crawled through his window as I had so many times in the past, back before I was emancipated from Hank and needed to hide in the safety of Max's home. But I was there for almost the same reasons. I still needed the safety of Max.

My leader.

He looked up at me, immediately panicked, and sat up in bed, the blankets slipping around his bare chest. The room was warm. I was hot. The sweat pricked on the back of my neck and I brought my hand up to wipe my brow. Max stared at me and leaned towards the nightstand, his hand heading for the light.

I felt the sweat drip down my back and knew that I wanted the darkness, I stopped him. My hand went out to catch his and I held it, sitting beside him on the bed. I'd sat on the bed before, but this time it was as if it was too small for the both of us.

His face fell when I grabbed his hand and didn't let go, my voice sounded stilted in the darkness.

"Maxwell. Nothing's wrong, not really. I just wanted to see you." There.

"Funny. You've been avoiding me for days." His voice was plain and told me nothing. I had expected him to know why I had been so afraid to see him, to know why I had pretended to not recognize him waving me over in the hallway and why I fled every time I even thought that I saw his face. In the back of my mind, I had even thought that he felt the same way.

"I didn't know what to say." I felt my head fall and used all my strength to pull it back up, to meet his wide eyes. I still held his hand under mine.

"You've never had that problem before, Michael. Why now?" I heard his words echo through my ears and I didn't have an answer. There was a soft anger in his face, his brows furrowed in the light of the street and my hand trembling over his. Max's muscles have a definition that mine don't, that mine probably never will. I was so aware of both of us, our bodies, our minds, his lips.

How do you kiss the man who would be king?

I leaned forward, stopping myself every few millimeters to gauge his reaction. He stared back at me with wild eyes -- nothing I had ever seen in him before. And that gave me the strength to keep moving.

It seemed like there were miles between us. Our open eyes bore into each other's as my lips touched his slowly. There was thunder outside in the street, I heard the crack as plainly as I could hear my own heartbeat under my ribs. My hand went up to his chest and rounded his back curving into the sharp pit of his shoulder blade, I pulled him closer to me and when I knew he wasn't going to pull away, that he was melting into my arms, I deepened the kiss.

My leader. My lover. His lips yielded beneath mine.

I spoke into his mouth, apologizing for the past two days and for worrying him needlessly. I told him that I was sorry that I didn't have the courage to tell him sooner. And he apologized for not telling me himself.

"I should have been the one. I shouldn't have left you alone the other night." His hands cupped my face.

"Your arms were enough, Maxwell. They're more than enough now."

Our tongues slid against each other's and the prickle on the back of my neck traveled down my spine and through my legs. Max's hard body slipped down into the pillows and we wrestled against each other. I forgot about revolutions and destinies and planets far away, I forgot about everything.

I could die in his arms and it would be the perfect place.

Noises in the street; sounds seeming brighter in the dim light and in Max's embrace. Leaves blew through the driveway. Animals beyond us in the desert. And I could hear them all as if they were in the room with us. But I knew it was just him and I and nothing else.

He had told me once long ago how he felt when Liz Parker walked into a room, I wondered if he felt the same way when it was me standing over him.

"No, Michael. It's different because it's you." Had I said it out loud? I hadn't felt my voice leave me.

I released him and laid my cheek against his chest, my rough face brushing his smooth pecs, my eyes pointed towards his. "Have you always been able to do that?" The thought frightened me; Max living inside my mind, watching the carnal filmstrip playing looped through my head.

"No. But when you were kissing me, I heard you inside me." He stroked his hand across my chest and rested it on my heart. And I knew he knew everything that it meant.

He pulled me back up to him and pressed my back against the wall, his mouth plundering mine with hard kisses, and the taste that lingered in the back of our throats of metal and hot spice.I took his face in my hands and wondered if he could hear how much I loved him, how deeply I had always loved him. Maybe this was the reason that we were together in a past life, maybe this was why I had been his right hand man? We must have been inseparable. Maybe that was the part of destiny that we'd never known about.

I loved him. "I love you." It was so natural. I had known that all along. I had known that a year earlier in my fury as he pulled Liz back from death and risked all of our lives and I had known it earlier that night when I stealthily entered his bedroom. Saying it out loud wasn't what I needed to make it real, touching him did that.

"I've always loved you, Michael." Max's ever placid voice

Again I captured his mouth between my lips and my legs slid between his, pressing into him; feeling his cock solid against my thigh and rubbing furiously against it. That metallic taste in the pit of my stomach now and still rushing through my taste buds as my tongue undulated over his.

His muscles rippled under my palms, his hands groped at my clothes and pushed my shirt over my shoulders and off of me. We lay chest to bare chest in the lightening moonlight. Thunder crashed again in the sky.

"I should leave before it rains." I looked off to the sky and saw nothing but the blackness.

"It's already rained. Stay with me." The streets were still dry.

He held his hand towards the door and the lock clicked shut assuaging my small fear. When his hand returned to my skin I felt the glow all around us, the current that only we shared.

I kicked the blanket from the bed and stretched out beside him, the rough denim of my jeans scraping against his bare legs like the rake of my fingernails. We're so different, Max and I. Me, of dirty hands and soft skin, in contrast to his perfect shape and boxer briefs tight and clean. He went at the buttons at my fly and pushed at them.

"Take these off, they're uncomfortable."

I could only nod and remove them.

My leader. My lover. My cock hard against my stomach and his hands grappling my flesh.

Lying above Max Evans, I saw god. Not the god of this Earth and a bible written by authors of a lost time, but our own god. The room illuminated with the spark of lightning outside the window. Or maybe it stemmed from us. The friction between us, his cock long pressed against mine, our chests slammed together sealed in sweat. I heard him say my name more than once.

And our mouths connected in a dance. And our hands sought out each other's limbs. And I reached into the waistband of his underwear and held him in my hands. Smooth skin hard like marble, veined and swollen. Metallic tang in the back of my throat to be replaced with that even skin and salted sweetness as I slid my mouth from his and placed gentle kisses over his throat.

His small, tight nipples responsive in my mouth, his hands pushing and pulling at my shoulders. Max arched off the bed and I felt his cock pulse in synch with the rhythm of the blood coursing my heart.

My nerves swam with every touch of his fingertips. My fist pumped at his erection as his moans reverberated in my eardrums and I had never heard anything before that moment. And I wanted him inside me even though he already was. I heard him there telling me that it was me, that I was the one.

His kiss was deep before he left my mouth and turned my back to him climbing over and behind me. I had no fears left, they liquefied as I felt his lips on my back and his digits probe places I had never felt touched before. Max whispered at me to relax as his saliva slicked palm slid over every private part of my body made public only to him.

My leader. My lover. He parted my cheeks and with a hand cupping my balls and running tight along my rigid shaft, his cock wet with pre-come and his spit, Max pressed into me. I felt the sharp pain of my skin stretching to accommodate him and the hiss of his breath leaving his lungs as I clamped around him. I heard him say my name.

I heard him say my name and I knew that I was the only one that mattered anymore. Safe in Max's embrace, he filled me. My lover. My leader.

I wanted to see him though. I wanted to watch his eyes even though his lips and hands and the burning inside me were almost enough.

His hands hold to my waist and he pushed himself deeper; the grip he continued on my cock sent my head reeling and my heart rising in my chest. I see stars, constellations, entire galaxies as he finds his rhythm within me and matches it with his fingers.

Fuck. Pain subsides leaving me bathed in only a sublime warmth that starts and ends with Max. My eyes squeeze shut and every sense is doubly heightened and I could finally hear him in my mind gently telling me things that I had only ever thought myself. The warmth takes my entire body. I cried out as I erupted in his fist, eyes glazing over and a shudder that paralyzed me. Max's tongue swept my spine.

His hand never leaves me until I'm milked of everything I have. My breath comes in a ragged pant as his quickens with the motion of his body driving into me. His back arched and he sucked his breath and I felt the pulse of his cock as he emptied himself into my ass with a sharp hiss of air through his teeth. His hand pushed me down flat into the bed.

My leader. My lover. He took my hands into his when he laid down beside me and slid his tongue between my lips.

My eyes must have darkened, my face must have changed. Max shook his head at me to tell me that he knew what I was feeling and that everything would be fine. Everything had changed between us, yet nothing had changed. We were still the same people, for lack of a better word, and we still had the same challenges. But we were one now. Still four, still two by two, but one.

And one is strong.

END