Spoilers: All of Roswell is up for grabs, very very AU post Departure.
Disclaimer: I own absolutely nothing, all characters and original Roswell settings belong to other very lucky people.
Pairings/Couples/Category: UC, Liz/Rath, total smut
Rating: Adult
Warnings: Naughty summer fun, definitely adult
Summary: Liz comes back to Roswell for a visit and falls prey to a summer seduction she never could have predicted, but can’t resist.
A/N: So the big AU things to keep in mind are that Vilondra and Nicholas plotted Zan’s death, Rath wasn’t involved, and that Liz never took Max back after Departure so you can pretty much erase season three.
A/N2: This was written for the Vilondra Summer Fic challenge over on Roswell Heaven where it won for Best UC fic and was runner-up for Best Exploration of a Minor Character.
Heat makes people crazy. It increases temperatures, tempers, and temptations. Heat waves like the ones in Roswell make your brain bake inside of your skull until you can practically hear the sizzle. You see funny shapes in the air, constantly feel like you have a fever, and lose all ability to think rationally. Heat and hormones, that’s the explanation for what happened that summer, or at least, the only explanation that I’m willing to accept…
Liz stood just inside the swinging door, staring out at her parent’s restaurant through the clouded window, lost in thought. It was so strange to be back here. Every inch of this place, of this town, flooded her with uncontrollable memories, with visions of the past, and visions of the future she’d once thought she’d have. She laughed softly, a chuckle that once would have been bitter and now was genuinely amused. She had been so naïve then, just a scant three years ago. Sometimes she felt a lot older than her mere twenty-one years.
“So, do you believe in aliens?” A deep voice asked from behind her, breath whispering warmly against her ear, entirely too close for comfort.
She gasped and spun, heart seizing in her chest until she realized that the figure looming over her was familiar. “Mi…” Her brain caught up with her eyes and she trailed off, realizing her mistake. The figure was familiar, but it wasn’t Michael. This young man had shortened spikes instead of the shoulder length waves from the last picture Maria had sent her, and intriguing glints of silver at eyebrow and chin that Michael had never possessed. Not to mention the intricate tattoos peeking out from his rolled up sleeves.
“Rath! What are you doing here?” She exclaimed, wondering why her heart was still pounding, and what the hybrid she hadn’t seen since he and Ava left town after the summit was doing in her father’s diner, looking so oddly at home.
“I work here kitten, what are you doing here?” He stated, raising one eyebrow, his dark whiskey eyes glinting with amusement as they met hers. “Last I heard, you hadn’t set foot in good ol’ Roswell in years.”
She flushed slightly, uncomfortable with his intense appraisal of her, and the casual endearment, as well as the flutters those things sent through her stomach, and barely managed to reply. “I’ve been busy with school; this is the first chance I’ve had to visit my parents.”
She hated that she sounded so defensive, but couldn’t help it; Roswell brought back the insecure girl in her, no matter how confident and composed she was at Stanford. And she was busy, with a double major in molecular biology and law, and trying to cut her schooling down by at least one year per degree, she barely had time to eat and sleep, much less visit. And maybe, if she told herself that enough times, she’d actually believe it.
Rath didn’t seem to believe her either, but he refrained from commenting, instead gesturing towards the kitchen. “Hungry? We’re not busy, I could make you something.”
“Sure.” She said, nodding distractedly as she realized that she still didn’t know how he came to be working at her parent’s diner, and trying to ignore the way the tattoos on his biceps rippled enticingly every time he moved his arms.
Following him into the kitchen, she leaned against the counter and watched in growing amazement as he proceeded to make her favorite sandwich, a Galaxy Melt on sourdough with ham instead of turkey, and colby jack instead of cheddar. He slid it onto a plate and added some fries, shook some pepper over them instead of salt, and handed it to her as she gaped.
“How, how did you?” She stammered out and he shrugged, sensuous lips curling into a smile that made the flutters in her stomach start to smolder with liquid fire.
“Michael told me, after Mr. P gave me the job.”
She nodded slowly, surprised that Michael still remembered such things after all this time. “And how exactly did you end up here, asking my dad for a job?”
His left shoulder lifted into another shrug, rippling those muscles again, and she forcibly dragged her gaze to his face, choosing not to contemplate if he really was smirking at her obvious perusal of him. “Ava had Kal set her up with a new life.” Liz nodded, having been contacted since then by the small blond who had somehow become one of her best friends. “He offered to do the same for me, but I didn’t want to go to school like her, and thought someone should keep an eye on Lonnie and the pipsqueak.”
Liz shuddered, remembering the girl who had almost killed Max, only Rath and Ava’s interference preventing it, and who had threatened to come after all of them when her plan failed. She never had, and Liz had always assumed it was because of Tess returning to Antar, seeing the stoic expression on Rath’s face, she came to the conclusion that she’d been wrong.
“She’s dead now, although I think Nicky boy’s still out there, he’s harder to kill than a cockroach, the little bastard.” He said with obvious disgust, though something in his shuttered gaze told her the confrontation hadn’t been as easy as he was playing it off.
Liz bit her lip, unsure if she should offer comfort to him for having to kill a former lover, and possibly love, even if she had tried to kill him first. Other than learning to control her powers, she’d avoided the alien abyss ever since graduation. She still talked with Michael and Maria who lived in New York now, and Kyle and Isabel who were both in Albuquerque at the University of New Mexico, as well as Ava of course, but there was an unspoken rule that the alien drama was over, at least for Liz, and she had willingly chosen ignorance for everything but true emergencies, which thankfully had only happened twice in the past three years.
So instead of offering comfort and continuing to reopen old wounds for both of them, she found herself inviting him to her night out with Kyle and Isabel (both also visiting for the summer), shocked at herself even as she spoke. “If you’re not working tonight, you should come out with me and Isabel and Kyle, we’re going to that new club, Abducted.”
“How appropriate.” He said with a low, rasping chuckle that made her shiver, and then eyed her appraisingly, thoughts she couldn’t read flickering through his gold-flecked eyes, before nodding. “Sure kitten, I’m always up for a night out with a beautiful woman.”
She flushed again and nodded, then stammered out an excuse and fled the kitchen, almost forgetting her plate in her haste to get away from him and the strange pull he seemed to exert over her, awakening desires she had buried for the past four years. Maria and Ava had both berated her for the fact that she hadn’t had a single date since the ruin of her junior prom, and even Kyle had stuck his oar in on occasion, driving her crazy with Buddhist quotes about balance and lamp trimming.
Groaning, she shook her head to clear it of unwelcome thoughts and carried her plate upstairs, determined to get some studying in while she ate. Her parents, Kyle and Isabel, and Ava, had all pushed her to take this vacation, and she was regretting it already.
~
Six hours later found her standing in front of her closet, all the clothes from her suitcase strewn around her room, as she tried to decide what to wear, and to convince herself that it wasn’t taking this long because of the far too hot for his own good alien hybrid downstairs. Everything she’d found so far was either way too slutty, usually Maria or Ava influenced, or too ‘Perfect Miss Parker’.
“Screw this, I’m cheating.” She muttered to herself, stalking to her bedroom door and flipping the lock before turning to stare at her bed and the pile of maybes that had been tossed there. Picking up a far too short, studded, black leather skirt, she shimmied into it and then rested her fingers against the soft material, a wave of energy spreading from them and lengthening the skirt, removing the studs, and then changing the shade to a dark, rich brown.
She shifted through the tops before settling on a pink, lacy midriff shirt that she was pretty sure Maria had sent her for her last birthday, and slid it on, again lengthening it until only a faint sliver of her stomach was revealed when she moved, then lightening it until it was a soft pearl color, several shades paler than her skin, which the California sun kept just as golden as it was in New Mexico.
Walking into her bathroom, she studied her hair in the mirror, currently in loose and tousled curls from her earlier shower, before deciding to leave it alone and then waving her hand over her face, grinning as she remembered how envious she’d been of Isabel’s makeup applying skills in high school. Opening her small jewelry box, she pulled out a pair of beaten gold hoops inherited from her grandmother, and put them on, smiling at the resulting image in the mirror – she’d come a long way from the slightly mousy, definitely bookish, girl next door.
Though, sadly, (one of the few things she agreed with Maria and Ava on) she was just as virginal. No dating, at least for her, meant no sex either, something she was finding increasingly frustrating. Rolling her eyes at herself as her thoughts once again returned to forbidden territory, she flicked off the bathroom light and perched on her bed long enough to slide into her favorite pair of chunky, strappy heels, that gave her an extra couple inches of height and were comfortable enough to dance in for hours on end without wanting to chop her feet off.
The height was necessary given who she’d invited, Rath being just as tall as Michael, meaning that he loomed over her tiny frame. Damn him, why did she have to find tall guys sexy?
Standing up again, she hesitated at her door. You can do this Liz she told herself, it’s just an evening out with some friends, nothing is going to happen…no matter how much a part of you wants it to, got it? Good.
Her resolve lasted all the way out of her parent’s home and down the stairs. Then she saw Rath waiting in the break room, wearing a tight black t-shirt that showed every line of his decidedly defined torso, and revealing those intricate tattoos she’d been so fascinated by earlier. Add in the jeans that hung low on his hips, revealing a tantalizing glimpse of inked, golden flesh when he stretched, and she realized as her mouth went dry with lust that no amount of self control was going to save her tonight.
He turned to face her, his full, sensuous lips quirking into a smile as his burning, sienna eyes raked her from head to toe, alighting tiny flames beneath her skin as her long ignored libido made its presence known, making it clear that it didn’t care what she wanted or didn’t want, it had its own plans. “Looking good kitten, I bet those Stanford boys are missing you now.”
Fighting another blush she raised an eyebrow, summoning some of the confidence that had abandoned her the moment she passed the Roswell city limits sign, stating mockingly. “And what about those Roswell girls? I bet they just eat you up.”
Rath laughed, his Adam’s apple bobbing intriguingly as the warm, caressing, sound sent shivers down her spine. “I haven’t noticed kitten, but since you’re a Roswell girl, does that mean you want to eat me up?” He asked with suggestive amusement, smiling lazily at her and making her lose her battle with her blush, red rising up her cheeks as he continued to smirk.
Before she was forced to come up with a reply, she was saved by the outside door to the break room swinging open, revealing Kyle and Isabel, holding hands and grinning sappily. Liz grinned too, both in relief, and at the sight of two of her friends being so happy with each other, one of the few good things that came out of the disaster of their high school years. “Hey you two, it’s about time you showed up. Did you take a nookie break?” She teased, ignoring the voice in the back of her head that said she should have been the one to go for a nookie break.
“What can I say? She can’t get enough of me.” Kyle boasted, blue eyes twinkling lasciviously as he pulled Isabel even closer, the statuesque blond rolling her eyes but smiling affectionately as she allowed the embrace.
“Sure honey, just keep telling yourself that.” She said dryly, giving Liz and Rath a knowing wink and making them both chuckle as Kyle pouted briefly, before resuming his usual, irrepressible smile.
“Well at least one of us is getting some, unlike poor Parker here. You know Liz, when one’s heart and one’s mind are not in balance, one’s body is the first to fail. Maybe if you actually let your body have some fun, you’d do even better in those crazy genius studies of yours.”
Liz glared at him, managing a strained laugh as she felt Rath’s interested gaze. “I think I’m doing just fine Kyle, and my professors agree. Now, are we driving or walking?”
Kyle smirked, aware that he’d hit a nerve, but Isabel nudged him, not very gently, and he let the subject change pass without further comment, though Liz was experienced enough to know that she hadn’t heard the last of him. “We’re walking.” Isabel said, smiling warmly at her. “This is Roswell after all, so it’s only three blocks away.”
“Ah Roswell, how I do not miss thee.” Liz said with a short chuckle, earning an emphatic, agreeing nod from Isabel, and another curious glance from Rath, which she studiously ignored. “Well let’s go then shall we? Those cocktails won’t drink themselves.”
Kyle nodded enthusiastically, grin widening. “No they won’t. Thank Buddha our freakish alien powers didn’t come with that ridiculous alcohol intolerancy.” Isabel grimaced and he slid an arm around her waist. “Sorry honey.”
“Yet more proof that we were the superior set.” Rath said smugly when Isabel didn’t deign to reply to her boyfriend, the teasing grin he sported proving he wasn’t serious.
Liz cocked a curious eyebrow at him, the scientist in her ever curious. “You can drink? Without exploding parking meters?”
“Not sure what that means kitten, but yes, I can drink, and no exploding parking meters so far.” He replied, his eyes glittering with amusement and setting her temperature back into a slow boil.
“Unfortunately.” Kyle muttered, giving Liz the ability to tear her eyes away from Rath’s intent gaze. “Tricking me into a losing bet…I prayed to the porcelain god for hours that night.”
Rath shrugged, grin fading back into that lazy smirk that made Liz’s fingers tingle. “I thought your master was supposed to give you wisdom, how was I supposed to know you’d be so foolish?”
Liz and Isabel started snickering and Kyle huffed in mock offense before turning towards the door and tugging Isabel along with him. “Okay, come on, I’m feeling a need for that drink now.”
Isabel wove their fingers together again and winked at him as he opened the door for her. “Just no praying to the porcelain god tonight dear, I have plans for you.” In response he pulled her down for a hearty kiss that made Liz sigh softly in envy, not of Kyle, that ship had sailed years ago, but of the easy friendship and love they clearly shared, not to mention the obvious chemistry even after two and a half years together.
Rath had moved to stand next to her while she was distracted, and he lightly touched the small of her back, startling her with the electricity that instantly flowed between them. “Coming kitten?”
She bit back an X rated response that she entirely blamed on Ava’s influence, and nodded, letting him guide her towards the door and out onto the sidewalk, the heat instantly smothering them in a heavy crush of misery. “California is sounding better and better, why did I let you guys talk me into this?” She groaned, wiping her hand across her forehead as sweat beaded along her hairline, the heat so dry and suffocating it felt like they were walking in an oven.
“Because we missed you, crazy, I know.” Kyle responded sarcastically. “Apparently the feeling wasn’t mutual.”
She stuck her tongue out at him, twisting her hair into a knot and holding it off her neck in a futile attempt to make the heat more bearable, and silently wondering how the heat radiating from Rath, still keeping pace beside her, could feel more intense than the ungodly weather. “You could have come and visited me, as I recall you and Is quite enjoyed your last visit.”
“We did, but that’s beside the point, Roswell misses you.” Kyle said pompously, making Liz roll her eyes.
“Yes Kyle, I’m sure the city missed me.”
Before he could rebut, Isabel held up her hand in a quelling gesture, and pointed to the building they had just reached, covered in flashing, garish neon lights, the sign over the door showing a human couple disappearing into a spinning spaceship. “We’re here, and I don’t know about you two, but I’m ready for some air conditioning.”
“Oh god yes.” Liz muttered, barely noticing Rath’s amused glance at her choice of words, before sliding out her ID and some cash for the cover charge out of the pocket she’d created in the skirt and following Isabel and Kyle into the club, Rath close enough on her heels that she could still feel his intense body heat pressing against her.
The moment they stepped into the main part of the club, the noise deafened them, pounding base interspersed with rhythmic music that would make even the most dedicated wall flower feel the urge to dance. The lights were just as garish and flashing as those outside, if in slightly less neon colors, and Liz felt thoughts of school and aliens and her other stresses start to melt away as something more primal, more focused on physicality, took over.
Kyle was already half way across the room heading for the bar, and Isabel followed after shooting Liz an amused, and slightly questioning glance. Liz waved her away, indicating that she was fine, and returned her attention the frantic dancers, their movements mesmerizing in an almost hypnotic way.
The music pulsed, creeping into her bloodstream and setting every inch of her on fire with the need to move, and not in the public appropriate kind of way that at least some of the dancers were adhering to. Two large hands settled on her waist, the thumbs caressing the bare skin of her hips, and her eyes slid closed as she swayed slightly, flames licking up her skin with exquisite intensity.
“Dance with me kitten?” Rath whispered in her ear, hot breath fanning against her sensitive skin and making her shiver with increased desire. Why did he affect her so much? None of the boys at Stanford had elicited even a tenth of this reaction from her, no matter how hard they tried, and just one touch from him...
She took a long, shuddering breath, trying to assert some rational control over her raging hormones and failing miserably. “You mean you can dance? Michael always had two left feet.”
He chuckled, turning her in his arms so that she was snugly pressed against his long, muscled body, her head just brushing the underside of his chin and her hands instinctively splaying across his chest, reveling in the way the hard planes felt under her palms even as the dwindling logical voice in her brain tried to get her to pull away. “Didn’t I already tell you that we were the superior set?”
She mumbled her agreement, not trusting herself to form coherent words, and he slow walked them on to the dance floor, his legs guiding hers, the pressure sending electric tingles straight to her core. They reached the milling mass of people, all writhing to the beat, and her hips began to move of their own accord, his following with a sensual ease that shocked her despite his confident words.
She dared to glance up at him briefly and found his eyelids halfway shut as he stared at her with sultry intensity, her breath catching in her throat at the sheer level of desire expressed in his smoky, caramel eyes. The flush in her cheeks crawled down her throat and she closed her eyes to hide her own need, just reveling in the feel of their bodies moving together and silently reminding herself why this was as far as she should let it go.
One of his hands slid up her back, inside her shirt, the calloused pads of his fingers, tracing intricate designs on her skin while the other still gripped her hip and held her tightly against him. She moaned softly, arching against him and letting her head fall back as the beat sped up and their movements grew more frenetic, stoking the fire in her blood until her pulse was pounding nearly as fast as the base shaking the floor beneath their feet, the last dregs of her tension fading away into a haze of sensation and lust.
She let her own hands roam up his chest, feeling every cord of muscle and sinew before sliding around his neck, her fingers toying with the few hairs that had escaped the spikes. It was the most intimately she’d touched a man in almost five years and it thrilled her almost more than the way he was touching her. Was this what she had been missing all this time? Or was this just a Rath thing?
“It’s me.” He murmured, and her eyes snapped open to see that he’d bent down and was bare inches from her face, one side of his mouth curved into a smirk. Her mouth gaped slightly and he shook his head. “No, I can’t read your mind kitten, just your face.” Then he closed the distance between them and brushed his mouth against hers, gentle and slow, sparks burning into her lips and searing through the tenuous thread of her self control.
She stopped toying with his hair and gripped his head instead, pulling him closer to her and kissing him fiercely, gasping as the hand on her hip slid down to cup her bottom, sliding her up his body as his tongue invaded her mouth, tangling with hers in a heated dance that had her clutching the back of his shirt and pressing herself even closer to him as urgent need welled inside of her, no longer willing to be denied.
This was liquid heat, a passion more intense than she’d ever felt, and she couldn’t get enough of the feel of him, the taste of him – cinnamon and Tabasco with the faintest hint of chocolate, absolutely decadent and utterly irresistible. His teeth latched onto her tongue, sending white hot bolts of electricity through her, and she moaned, rocking herself against the hardness she could feel through his jeans, all of her usual unwillingness to indulge in public displays of affections lost in a swamping wave of unbridled lust.
Her nails dug into his back through the thin cotton of his shirt and he tightened his grip on her in response, pulling her higher on his body until her feet had left the ground and her legs curled around his waist automatically, her skirt riding up as his hand caressed the bare skin of her leg just below the curve of her bottom, barely in the realm of decency and creating sensations that were definitely not safe in the presence of other people, pushing her to new heights of arousal as wetness slicked the area between her legs, every brush of his denim covered length sending her spiraling closer to a peak she craved with desperate intensity.
Something in her pocket vibrated, startling both of them, and she pulled away from his kiss, blushing furiously as she realized how much control she’d lost. He loosened his grip on her and she slid back down his body to the floor, moaning softly at the loss of contact and then hastily stepping away, taking several deep breaths as she avoided meeting his gaze. “I’m going to go get a drink.” She said, almost having to shout to be heard over the music, before turning away from him and pushing through the mass of people to reach the edge of the dance floor, relieved to find that no one was looking at her oddly or indicating in any way that her wanton behavior had been noticed.
What the hell had she been thinking? Or, more appropriately, what had she been thinking with?
I definitely think that he's an underdeveloped character, and I will have to write more with him. And you know, I can't think of one fic I write that doesn't have Liz with powers, but you're right, Maria tends not to in the canon fics I read unless all of them have powers. As for the kiss 
just wait and read this part 