The Kids Are All Right
Fandom: X-Files/Roswell
Category/Rated: PG
Year/Length: 2008/~1,838 words
Pairing: Alex Krycek/Michael Guerin
Disclaimer: These boys are not mine, and this didn't happen.
Author's Notes: I offered up stories for folks that gave me a prompt. This was the fourth, and it was for ![[info]](http://p-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
phantomas She wanted Alex Krycek to find out Michael Guerin is an alien and then let him go.
Beta: by lorelei633
It had to happen, Alex Krycek thought. Using binoculars, he tracked his quarry from his vantage point, wedged into the hollow of a rocky outcrop. Krycek was a few miles outside of Roswell, New Mexico, watching Fox Mulder, who was watching Morris Fletcher – or at least he had been until just a few minutes ago.
What Morris was doing, Krycek neither knew nor cared. He'd followed Mulder in the hopes of finding the craft that was apparently hidden around here, and he'd spent altogether too long playing cat and mouse with the two of them. He'd sat up here in his little hidey hole, watching Mulder as he watched Fletcher parade about with a theodolite and a shovel, and come to the conclusion that they were both insane. The only good thing about the entire weekend was the fact that he was topping up his tan.
He was in danger of falling asleep when he saw it. The jeep appeared and a young man hopped out, looking around and blowing Krycek's mind.
The kid – who looked to be no more than nineteen or twenty – made for a little fissure in the rocks below and arrived at an open arena that was surrounded from all sides. Krycek, curious, crawled forward a little, abandoning his study of Mulder in favor of this new diversion, and got himself wedged into a position where he could observe the newcomer. He thought that the kid would masturbate or something, which would for sure be amusing, because he was hot, with a sulky mouth that rivaled Mulder's and long, long legs.
His surprise and fascination was complete when the kid placed a rock in the center of the small arena, stepped back to the rocky walls, extended his hand and yelled, "POW!"
He was even more astonished when the rock exploded into so much gravel, peppering the dusty walls with shrapnel and causing the young man to curse up a storm. Krycek grinned to himself, imagining if it had been Mulder rather than himself that had caught the show now unfolding.
Rock after rock exploded at the young man's command, but apparently that wasn't enough for him. He could be heard swearing and muttering under his breath as he moved about the sheltered arena, and Alex chuckled as a particularly lively piece of invective floated to his ears.
He decided that he would go and find out a little more about the young man who seemed so bent on exploding every piece of limestone in the entire area, so at length he wriggled down out of his concealment and went to find the way into the crevice.
Close up, the kid was bigger and broader than Alex, and when the secret agent appeared in the opening that led back to the outside world, he reared back and raised his hand as if to work his mojo. Alex, very wisely, stepped back out of the line of fire just as the explosion came. Splinters of limestone ricocheted across the place where he'd been standing mere seconds ago. This was truly delicious. The boy was fascinating.
"Hold off. I'm not going to hurt you," he called, stepping forward again. "You don't want to kill me for real, do you? Just think about how terrible a lifetime in jail would be." He laughed. "Just think how terrible the guilt would be."
"If I was caught," said the youngster, squinting at Alex with a ferocious scowl on his face. "And if I felt guilty."
He seemed to feel that this was enough and turned to collect the overshirt he'd dumped in a crevice in the rock, ignoring Alex, who found himself rather amused by the kid. "That's a neat trick you have there," he said, lounging against the limestone wall. "Do you do anything else as an encore?"
"Yeah, I fuck off out of here," growled the young man, shrugging into his discarded clothing. "It's almost like magic. Watch me."
"Uh, not so fast, my young friend." Alex reached for the boy's collar and hauled him back as he was about to muscle past and out of the small sanctuary. "I've got a couple of questions I'd like answered, so settle down. I'm not hard to please, but I'm pretty easy to piss off."
The youngster was putting on a brave face, but it was obvious from the way his eyes kept darting around that the wheels were turning, trying to think up a way out of this.
"So tell me, my friend, how do you do the exploding rock thing?" Alex's voice was soft, pleasant even, but the gun in his hand shone like something wicked in the afternoon sunshine, and the kid's eyes widened as he caught sight of it. "It's okay. Don't worry about the hardware; just tell me how you do that, and keep your hands in your pockets, or find out just how painful a bullet in a tender spot can be."
It was obvious to Alex that the kid fancied himself a badass, but his expression had turned from belligerent to wary and then to frankly scared. "Who are you? What do you want?"
"I want to know the secret of life, the universe and everything, little one." Alex's voice was a purr. "And I'm starting with you, so come on, kiddo, confide in me."
Impotent fury flickered behind the young man's eyes, but he did a commendable job of keeping his voice calm. "My name is James T. Kirk, but you can call me captain, if you like."
"You're right handed, aren't you?" Alex nodded. "You were using your right arm to hurl those psychic cherry bombs of yours, I think."
"What do you mean?" There was a tinge of fear in the uncertain way that the young man asked the question that made Alex think he'd win this encounter.
"Well, I don't want to impede you too much, yet, so I'm going to shoot you in the left shoulder first. That means you'll still be able to write checks and that kind of thing, even though your shoulder will hurt like a motherfucker." Alex waved his gun gently and smiled. "Course, if I were to miss my aim and hit your artery, then there wouldn't be anything I could do. It would be a shame, but there we have it. I believe that in the army they call it collateral damage."
He lifted his arm, pointed the gun and the young man's eyes widened. If he hadn't been pressed to a rock face, he would have stumbled backwards. As it was, he flinched and flattened himself against it.
"Okay, okay. I'm trying to learn the secrets of the aliens," he blurted. "I found a cache of alien stuff, and I'm… I'm trying to make it all work. I opened this box thing, and a voice told me to come out here and practice, so here I am."
"A box?" Alex's eyes lit up. "What else did it tell you?"
"It… it didn't, but there were a bunch of other things. I put it in the storeroom at work. Nobody's going to find it there. I'm the only one that goes in there." The youngster was no longer quite so defiant, and Alex congratulated himself on that. Nothing like the iron fist in the velvet glove to extract compliance from mouthy teens, he thought.
"I'd like to see it," murmured Alex, fondling his gun. "I mean, I'd really like to see it."
"I can show you! It's at the Crashdown." The kid seemed to be recovering his attitude, but at least he was compliant, and that was all good.
"Okay. Show me." Maybe there would be something in this cache of supposedly alien artifacts that Alex could use. The Consortium would want to know about it, at any rate.
At least the parts he decided to tell them.
The ride into town was brief. Alex had learned that the kid's name was Michael, and he was on his way to liking him. He followed Michael into the Crashdown, smiling serenely, hand on the gun in his pocket.
Michael led him through the diner and out past the kitchen to where the store cupboard was located. Extracting a key from the chain that hung on his belt, he unlocked the door and walked in to stand just inside the doorway. "Mind the eggs," he murmured, indicating a large brown wooden box on the middle shelf at the back of the room. "That's it," he said, standing to one side to allow Alex to pass him.
As Alex moved over to the box, Michael stepped backwards, out of the cupboard, closed the door behind him and locked it.
Liz had followed him into the kitchen, and now she stood, wide eyed. "What are you doing, Michael?"
"Don't ask questions; just go get Max – oh, and Isabel as well, if you can find her." He sat on the counter, his eyes trained on the door of the cupboard, wishing that he could do more than blow things to smithereens.
Max made his way into the kitchen almost immediately. As Michael was explaining the problem to him, the sound of a gunshot startled them, and Alex, who had blown the lock off the door, stepped out, still smiling.
"You'd think they'd make locks that could withstand that kind of treatment," he murmured, pointing his gun at Michael. "Heads, too."
Michael turned pale, and Max leaned forward to put his hand on Alex's gun. "Nice banana you have there," he murmured. Alex looked down at the article he was holding in his hand and frowned. It was indeed a banana. He suddenly knew as he looked from Michael to Max and back again exactly what he was dealing with.
"Look, guys," he said, after a huge battle with his conscience. "I appreciate that I'm not going to win here, and I kinda like the idea of a town full of alien kids hiding in plain sight." He drew a deep breath, shrugged, and then peeled his banana and ate it. "I'll leave town and forget I ever saw you." For now, his inner sociopath added. "If you'll promise to do one thing for me. You see, there's an FBI agent coming into town later today, name of Fox Mulder. He'll be dressed in a grey silk suit and looking for aliens too. Do me a favor. Turn his gun into a banana too. Do something to his cellphone as well, and while you're at it, explode his sunflower seeds. Will you do that for me?"
"Sounds good to me," murmured Michael, the beginnings of a smile on his sulky face.
As Alex turned and walked away, he made a mental note to look into the two boys further, once he'd found himself a new gun. One thing was for sure, these two would remain his secret, because he thought he might need them one day.
Smirking, he headed back to where he'd left his car.
| Back to My Stories –|– Email Dr. Ruthless |
