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Kyle can’t stop thinking about Max. About the track marks on his arms, the desperation on his face, the name typed out on the envelope he’d handed to Kyle. About what might be written on the letter inside.
He shoves it into his desk drawer and tries to focus on other things.
Then his dad’s old radio starts playing music, which is weird because it wouldn’t make a sound when Kyle had fiddled with the knobs earlier. It only gets weirder when Kyle’s dad’s voice sounds over the staticky song.
Then the weirdest thing of them all: he gets a strong, sudden urge to go find the clone.
Maybe it’s not that weird. He’d been fighting the impulse to try to get more information all day. Ever since Max told Kyle that the clone existed. Kyle had been distracted by the scabs marring the vulnerable skin of Max’s inner arm, the emotion in Max’s voice and his desperate, wet eyes, but he’d still wanted to investigate. Curiosity is natural for people into the sciences, especially when presented with a new problem, an alien problem. So yeah, even as Kyle has been attempting to distance himself from everyone else’s problems all day, he’s still had that itch in the back of his brain to investigate, gather data.
“You’re an idiot, Valenti,” Kyle mutters, then pets the top of his dad’s old radio apologetically. “Not you. Actually, yeah, you too.” With one last shake of his head he closes up his office and heads out to the desert.
Everything is pitch black and stark, and Kyle has no idea how he’s going to find the cave where this clone is apparently caged. In the smoke-obscured light of the moon everything looks the same. Kyle loves the desert, the complexity of it, the surreality, but at night it all looks the same. Especially this far outside of town, where one craggy rock illuminated by his headlights looks just like the next one.
After half an hour of driving, the itch in his brain almost unbearable, his car radio gives a burst of static and lets out a few eerie chords before going silent again. Kyle sweeps his eyes across the stretch of road and sand in front of him, and there. Tire tracks. Treads that look like they belong to the Jeep of a Sheriff’s deputy.
Kyle pulls off the road.
Driving in the actual desert is even spookier than on a road cutting through the desert, and he creeps forward at a glacial pace to avoid a head-on collision with a cactus. As he swerves to avoid a pile of rocks, cursing to himself, he catches a glimpse of a deeper shadow than the normal desert shadows off to his right. He turns, and it’s the mouth of a cave.
Adrenaline makes Kyle’s fingertips buzz as he slows to a stop and puts his car in park. There could be a million other caves that look just like this in this desert, but something in him is telling him this is the right one. A tug in his chest, like something is hooked in his ribs and pulling him forward. He still sits in the car for another minute, engine idling, before he feels brave enough to turn the keys and get out.
The flashlight on Kyle’s phone barely penetrates the darkness of the cave, the dusty walls of rock curving inward over his head. The opening extends a few feet and turns a corner, and then the ceiling gets significantly higher, Kyle’s flashlight showing him a hexagonal cage and some weird machinery and …
“Max!” Kyle rushes forward and drops to his knees, free hand immediately going for the pulse point in Max’s neck. His heartbeat is weak, barely fluttering against Kyle’s fingertips. “Fuck,” Kyle mutters to himself, and looks down Max’s body. He’s barely an inch taller than Kyle but he’s thicker, and Kyle has no idea how he’s going to drag Max out to his car. He debates calling for an ambulance, or for help from Michael or even Isobel, but then he tucks his phone under his chin and decides to just go for it.
“Don’t die on me, asshole,” he huffs and grunts as he hauls Max up off the floor and out of the cave, barely managing not to brain him on the walls of the cave, or trip over a stray rock. He manages to get the back door open and deposits Max none too gently on the seat, tucking his legs in and checking his pulse again. It’s thready but still there, and Kyle takes a moment, hand tucked under Max’s jaw with his fingers pressed to Max’s neck, to breathe.
Halfway back to town, there’s a rustle from the backseat that draws Kyle’s eyes to the rearview mirror. He’s having a hard time keeping his eyes off of the mirror, honestly, making sure Max’s chest is rising and falling under his uniform before jerking his attention back to the road.
“Wh—Kyle?” Max croaks, and then there’s pressure against the back of Kyle’s seat as Max rolls over and coughs into the footwell.
“Don’t puke in my car!” Kyle says, the relief flooding through him making his voice shake.
“‘M not.” There’s another round of dry coughing and then Max rolls back. The pressure against Kyle’s back disappears, and Kyle tightens his spine, sits up straighter in his seat. “How?”
“I don’t know,” Kyle says. “I was looking for the clone, and I found you.”
“You were looking for the clone?” Kyle looks in the mirror again and sees Max sitting up. He still looks waxy, drawn, the shadows under his eyes almost as dark as the mouth of the cave had been. He gives another cough, but his voice is stronger when he continues. “How do you know I’m not him?”
Kyle tears his eyes away, refocuses on the road. They’re getting closer to town, he can see the glow of the drive-in screen flickering up ahead. He thinks about Max’s question. It’s a fair one. Sure, this Max is wearing his deputy’s uniform, but the clone could have switched their clothing before escaping.
“I just do,” Kyle says, and keeps his eyes away from the mirror. Max doesn’t ask any more questions.
He takes the second right once he hits Main Street and then Max pipes back up, voice sounding even stronger. “Not the hospital.”
“Max, I have to. I can keep you away from everyone, but you were out cold, I need to—”
“Not the hospital,” Max insists, and all the lights in the dashboard flicker.
“Okay,” Kyle says, and then sighs, defeated. He takes the next right, heads away from downtown. In the backseat, Max blows out a breath so deep and so hard that it ruffles the hair at Kyle’s temple.
Max’s house is dark, the cracks in the glass of the patio doors catching the moonlight and breaking it into shards on the concrete. Max leans heavily on Kyle’s shoulder as they make their way from the car, his earthy petrichor scent invading Kyle’s nose. “I have to,” Max says, as Kyle helps him down onto the couch, more gently than he’d put him in the backseat. “There’s acetone in my desk drawer.”
Kyle gets it for him, and then does the best he can to check Max’s vitals without the proper equipment while Max chugs the entire bottle. “Your heartbeat is still weak,” he says, gripping Max’s wrist while he keeps an eye on his watch. When he looks back up Max is looking right at him.
“Why were you looking for the clone?” Max asks. There’s more color in his cheeks, the shadows under his eyes driven away by the light of the room and the acetone. Kyle shakes his head.
“I don’t really know. I wasn’t going to. I was going to let it go, let you all handle it. But I couldn’t stop thinking—” Kyle drops his eyes back down to his watch. He’d missed the last 15 seconds of the minute, he’d have to start counting again. He readjusts his grip on Max’s wrist and waits for the second hand to tick around to 12.
“About his heart?” Max asks. Kyle’s eyes jerk up again. The look in them must give him away because Max’s face softens. “How did you think you were going to get it, Kyle? Break through the alien tech cage and overpower the alien with special abilities and perform surgery in a cave?”
“I don’t know. I just can’t help but think that this could be a way to save you.”
Max’s mouth twitches, like he wants to smile but is still too weak. “You don’t have to save me. You’re still a good doctor.”
“It’s not that,” Kyle says, harsh. Max flinches, muscles flexing under Kyle’s fingers, and he realizes he’s started to squeeze Max’s wrist. He loosens his grip, sweeps his thumb against the skin in apology, and then goes still. He stares down at his fingers, at the smooth, unmarred skin of the inside of Max’s wrist. Then he mutters, “You’re an idiot.”
There’s a huff that could be a laugh from Max, and Kyle sweeps his thumb along Max’s wrist again. “Not you. Well, yeah.” Kyle looks up again, and Max’s face … Max’s face is so soft now that Kyle feels his sinuses burn. “You’re an idiot, too. I don’t have to save you, Max. But I want to.” He moves his thumb again, not at all a medical provider checking on their patient, but a person touching another person they care about. When that happened, Kyle isn’t sure, but there it is. “I need to.”
Max lifts his arm, pulling Kyle up onto his knees on the floor. Max puts his hand on his own shoulder, and since Kyle hasn’t relinquished his grip on Max’s wrist he ends up leaning across Max’s thighs, hand right over Max’s heart. It feels stronger there, reverberating through his chest, through Kyle’s hand.
“Okay,” Max says, and now his mouth does curl up into a smile.