Conversation Over Beer
This story was originally written for the Futures Without End contest.
Duncan cast a hurried glance along a crowded street, and caught a sudden glimpse of..."Methos, wait!" he exclaimed.
Methos kept walking, but turned with a shrug. "Duncan MacLeod. Greetings. What's up?" Only Methos could have made the incongruous words harmonize so completely.
Duncan had been rushing to catch up with Methos, but slowed down suddenly. "I just wanted to say" -- he glanced sideways at Methos as Methos waited -- "can I walk with you for a little while?"
"If you want." Methos turned on his heel and strode away, coat very conspicuously not flapping in the wind, and clinking faintly at every step. He was not waiting for Duncan.
Duncan caught up to him and together they stepped along hastily for a few minutes, not speaking.
"Methos?" Duncan said at last. "Why the hurry?"
"No particular reason," Methos said, "except the streets are dangerous for me at the moment. There's someone about, and he's been looking for me."
"He knows who you are?" Duncan asked.
Methos nodded. "I was his teacher."
Duncan accepted the words in silence, and forced himself to walk a little faster.
"Do you need help with him?" he said, after another long pause.
"Not the kind of help you would give, MacLeod, I don't," Methos said quietly.
"What are you going to do then?"
A mysterious smile was the only answer Duncan got to that.
----
"Listen," Duncan said as Methos was turning the key to his apartment door, "don't run away. Especially not if you think this guy's going to kill other people."
"I wasn't planning on running away, MacLeod," Methos said with a sigh. "Would you like a drink?"
"Sure," Duncan said, and followed Methos inside. Methos locked the door, and made his way over to the kitchenette, while Duncan took off his coat and set it on the coat stand.
Methos glanced into the refrigerator, shut it promptly, looked into the cabinet and pulled out two glasses and two beers. Duncan stood silent as he cracked ice into each glass.
Methos handed Duncan a beer and a glass of ice. "I hate it this way," he said, "but I forgot to put any in the fridge this morning."
"Not a problem," Duncan said. "I don't mind." They made their way over to the small living area, and Methos gestured at Duncan to take a seat.
"I don't think he's going to kill other people," Methos said, settling down into an easy chair. "It's me he wants."
"Any reason for that?" Duncan sat down on the armrest of the couch.
"There is." Methos looked down at his own beer. "I'd rather not explain it to you if I don't have to."
"Why, is it another of your dark secrets?" Duncan asked.
"No," Methos was quiet as he said this. "It's not dark, anyway. Just hard to explain."
"I've got time."
Methos sighed. "Jack -- his name is Jack Frost, if you'll believe it -- and I were lovers in the 1960s, let's see, that would be over forty years ago now, and I had to leave. There were some problems...with the law, among other things. He thought I betrayed him. He's still a very young immortal. I don't believe he's taken a head yet. But he's upset and angry, and he wants revenge."
"Do you make lovers out of all your students?" Duncan's tone was merely curious.
Methos looked up again with a quiet smile. "Byron wasn't a lover. It was a mutual gratification pleasure thing. But Jack, now. Jack has potential to grow into a good Immortal, one of the best, if he could get over his angry adolescent streak."
"Your students do seem to have them," Duncan observed.
"Were you shocked," Methos asked, apropos of nothing, "when I told you that Jack and I had been lovers?"
"No," Duncan answered. He smiled suddenly. "I have Byron's Quickening, how could I be? That alone could have easily cured me from shocked at anything ever." He glanced down and across at Methos. "He thought a lot about you."
"What, Byron?"
"Yes. Byron did." Duncan looked mischievous. "I didn't even know some of those positions were possible."
Methos gasped, and started laughing. "You're having me on!"
"No, no, I'm not. He really did think a lot about you. And of you."
"Thanks," Methos said. "It's nice to know that." He settled back into his chair and stared into the distance for a while, as Duncan watched him.
"You know a relationship between us would never work," Methos stated at last, calmly as if that was what they had been discussing for the last fifteen minutes.
"Were you considering it?" Duncan folded his hands across his lap and leaned back against the couch.
Methos smiled at him. "I have."
"So have I."
"I knew you had."
"I knew you had. It was fairly obvious."
"Obvious from what?" Methos sat up straight again.
Duncan laughed, watching Methos, the ever-calm, get flustered. "Oh, it was easy. The glances, the looks, the words, the way you always turned up to save my ass when I needed you, the way you pawed through my fridge and claimed my boat. The way you walked back into my life after the...with Keane."
"Not as dumb as I thought," Methos remarked to no one.
"Oh, you're just transparent, when you're not *trying* to be mysterious," Duncan said.
Methos shook his head. "That's what my fifty-fourth wife told me once. 'Andre,' she said, 'what you feel is easy to read on your face.' And when I told her I was trying to conceal what I felt, she laughed and simply said 'I know you are going away. I will be the richest widow in all the country. And I will miss you." Somehow she figured it out."
"Who was she?"
"A peasant girl from what is now Germany who married me and lived with me for fifteen years, until I vanished, some said in a carriage wreck." Methos smiled. "She was the richest widow in Oberammergau for many years, until the Black Death came. Then she died, and her wealth funded the first Passion Play."
"You've been so many different people." Duncan set his empty glass down on the small coffee table, and slid down to sit on the couch.
"Hundreds," Methos said.
"You've raised children."
"A few. Some of my wives had babies from previous marriages. But I always had to leave. About twenty years is the longest you can stay without people beginning to suspect, I think."
Duncan nodded. "Were you ever father of the bride?"
"Two of them. Elsa in the fifteenth century and Anne in the nineteenth. They were both beautiful brides." Methos looked up. " I wish I could have had a family again. Just once more. It hurts to look at children and think 'I could raise them better than that, and I'm just a crotchety old man.'" For a moment, he looked every day of five thousand years.
"You'll get your chance," Duncan said.
Methos smiled again, silently. "You and I, now..."
"What about you and me?"
"We've been through a lot."
"We have," Duncan said. "And even after all we've been through, you don't think a 'relationship' would work out between us. Why not? Wouldn't it all just come out in the wash anyway, like everything else has?"
"Things do," Methos said. "And yes, I don't think a romantic relationship would work. Just imagine the line of people wanting our heads. We'd have to be hiding all the time, and you hate that. I always change my identity and you never do. It wouldn't work."
"But what about the chemistry? The way you look at me, the way I look at you? Isn't that there?" Duncan stood up. He wasn't sure whether they were arguing only in theory or in reality, but in either case, it was an interesting exercise.
"It's there. On my part at least. You I'm not sure about."
Duncan grinned. "Oh."
"MacLeod..." Methos warned. Duncan ignored it.
He stepped across the short expanse between couch and easy chair, and bent down to look into Methos' eyes. Methos glanced away, but Duncan firmly took Methos' face in his hands and dragged his eyes back to meet Duncan's.
"Don't deny it," he whispered. "You do." And he kissed Methos.
Long and slow and very gentle. Not so much about passion as about affirmation. And Methos kissed him back, lips responding under his with so little reluctance that Duncan was sure Methos must be laughing behind his back at him.
So it was reality. Total reality.
When Duncan finally released him, Methos was flushed and breathing hard. "So you're a wonderful kisser," he said. "The rumors are true."
"It's not about how good a kisser I am," Duncan said, "but how good *we* are together. It's right, can't you see it?"
And the mysterious look dropped back onto Methos' face. "Time will tell," he said.
"What does that mean?"
Methos smiled. "Since today's the day to indulge in history lessons, remember when I told you when we met that my first days, before I took my first head, were a blur?" Duncan nodded. "In actuality, they are two. I lived two pre-Immortal lives, and by all the gods, I cannot remember which one is really mine."
"I don't understand."
"In one life, I was a slave. Forced to work in the fields, in the house, cleaning, cooking, being beaten, the works. In my other life, I was the master of that slave, and I was the one doing the beating and the forcing. I don't know who took whose head. I only know that when I recovered from the Quickening, I had two sets of memories, and no way of knowing which was me and which was not.
"Which do you think you were?" Duncan asked.
"I honestly couldn't tell you," Methos said. "I don't know. I have seen both the master and the slave in the lives I lived later. My fortunes have been strange -- either I am the oppressor or the oppressed, the rich man or the poor. Never in between.
"What are you now?"
"I am a rich man, but live as though I were not. Perhaps that way I can stave off the inevitable poverty that stalks me."
"How very strange," Duncan said. "Has this happened to anyone else, ever?"
"No," Methos said. "Only to me. I have speculated that it happened because both of us were so new at the Game that we were of equal strength, and so the mind of one could not fully absorb the mind of the other."
"It's as reasonable an explanation as any." Duncan yawned. "What time is it, and should I be going home?"
"It's nine o' clock," Methos said, glancing at the clock on the microwave across the room, "and you can stay here, if no one's expecting you. It is raining out. I have an errand to run in a little while, but you may sleep on the couch if you want."
"Not in your bed?"
Methos smiled. "No, MacLeod. Not in my bed. Not tonight." He leaned across to open the cabinet beside his chair. "Here. Blanket and pillow."
Duncan covered himself with the blanket, but did not go to sleep, instead leaning on an elbow and watching Methos sit silent in the easy chair. When the clock struck 9:30, Methos got up.
"Go to sleep, Duncan," he said, calling him by his first name, as he almost never did. "I'll see you later."
Methos switched off all the lights except the one by the front door. Duncan heard several clinks as Methos slid his coat on.
"Methos," he said. "Be careful."
Methos made his way over to stand next to Duncan. "Don't worry, darling," he said. "I will be." And swiftly, as though it were a hastily planned impulse, Methos kissed Duncan on the forehead.
"Goodbye," he whispered, and walked out the door. The smell of April rain drifted in as Methos seemed to drift out, rush of breeze and a door shutting. A air of finality lingered about him.
Approximately two hours later, Duncan woke up, when the power went out.
END
This story was originally written for the Futures Without End contest.
Duncan cast a hurried glance along a crowded street, and caught a sudden glimpse of..."Methos, wait!" he exclaimed.
Methos kept walking, but turned with a shrug. "Duncan MacLeod. Greetings. What's up?" Only Methos could have made the incongruous words harmonize so completely.
Duncan had been rushing to catch up with Methos, but slowed down suddenly. "I just wanted to say" -- he glanced sideways at Methos as Methos waited -- "can I walk with you for a little while?"
"If you want." Methos turned on his heel and strode away, coat very conspicuously not flapping in the wind, and clinking faintly at every step. He was not waiting for Duncan.
Duncan caught up to him and together they stepped along hastily for a few minutes, not speaking.
"Methos?" Duncan said at last. "Why the hurry?"
"No particular reason," Methos said, "except the streets are dangerous for me at the moment. There's someone about, and he's been looking for me."
"He knows who you are?" Duncan asked.
Methos nodded. "I was his teacher."
Duncan accepted the words in silence, and forced himself to walk a little faster.
"Do you need help with him?" he said, after another long pause.
"Not the kind of help you would give, MacLeod, I don't," Methos said quietly.
"What are you going to do then?"
A mysterious smile was the only answer Duncan got to that.
----
"Listen," Duncan said as Methos was turning the key to his apartment door, "don't run away. Especially not if you think this guy's going to kill other people."
"I wasn't planning on running away, MacLeod," Methos said with a sigh. "Would you like a drink?"
"Sure," Duncan said, and followed Methos inside. Methos locked the door, and made his way over to the kitchenette, while Duncan took off his coat and set it on the coat stand.
Methos glanced into the refrigerator, shut it promptly, looked into the cabinet and pulled out two glasses and two beers. Duncan stood silent as he cracked ice into each glass.
Methos handed Duncan a beer and a glass of ice. "I hate it this way," he said, "but I forgot to put any in the fridge this morning."
"Not a problem," Duncan said. "I don't mind." They made their way over to the small living area, and Methos gestured at Duncan to take a seat.
"I don't think he's going to kill other people," Methos said, settling down into an easy chair. "It's me he wants."
"Any reason for that?" Duncan sat down on the armrest of the couch.
"There is." Methos looked down at his own beer. "I'd rather not explain it to you if I don't have to."
"Why, is it another of your dark secrets?" Duncan asked.
"No," Methos was quiet as he said this. "It's not dark, anyway. Just hard to explain."
"I've got time."
Methos sighed. "Jack -- his name is Jack Frost, if you'll believe it -- and I were lovers in the 1960s, let's see, that would be over forty years ago now, and I had to leave. There were some problems...with the law, among other things. He thought I betrayed him. He's still a very young immortal. I don't believe he's taken a head yet. But he's upset and angry, and he wants revenge."
"Do you make lovers out of all your students?" Duncan's tone was merely curious.
Methos looked up again with a quiet smile. "Byron wasn't a lover. It was a mutual gratification pleasure thing. But Jack, now. Jack has potential to grow into a good Immortal, one of the best, if he could get over his angry adolescent streak."
"Your students do seem to have them," Duncan observed.
"Were you shocked," Methos asked, apropos of nothing, "when I told you that Jack and I had been lovers?"
"No," Duncan answered. He smiled suddenly. "I have Byron's Quickening, how could I be? That alone could have easily cured me from shocked at anything ever." He glanced down and across at Methos. "He thought a lot about you."
"What, Byron?"
"Yes. Byron did." Duncan looked mischievous. "I didn't even know some of those positions were possible."
Methos gasped, and started laughing. "You're having me on!"
"No, no, I'm not. He really did think a lot about you. And of you."
"Thanks," Methos said. "It's nice to know that." He settled back into his chair and stared into the distance for a while, as Duncan watched him.
"You know a relationship between us would never work," Methos stated at last, calmly as if that was what they had been discussing for the last fifteen minutes.
"Were you considering it?" Duncan folded his hands across his lap and leaned back against the couch.
Methos smiled at him. "I have."
"So have I."
"I knew you had."
"I knew you had. It was fairly obvious."
"Obvious from what?" Methos sat up straight again.
Duncan laughed, watching Methos, the ever-calm, get flustered. "Oh, it was easy. The glances, the looks, the words, the way you always turned up to save my ass when I needed you, the way you pawed through my fridge and claimed my boat. The way you walked back into my life after the...with Keane."
"Not as dumb as I thought," Methos remarked to no one.
"Oh, you're just transparent, when you're not *trying* to be mysterious," Duncan said.
Methos shook his head. "That's what my fifty-fourth wife told me once. 'Andre,' she said, 'what you feel is easy to read on your face.' And when I told her I was trying to conceal what I felt, she laughed and simply said 'I know you are going away. I will be the richest widow in all the country. And I will miss you." Somehow she figured it out."
"Who was she?"
"A peasant girl from what is now Germany who married me and lived with me for fifteen years, until I vanished, some said in a carriage wreck." Methos smiled. "She was the richest widow in Oberammergau for many years, until the Black Death came. Then she died, and her wealth funded the first Passion Play."
"You've been so many different people." Duncan set his empty glass down on the small coffee table, and slid down to sit on the couch.
"Hundreds," Methos said.
"You've raised children."
"A few. Some of my wives had babies from previous marriages. But I always had to leave. About twenty years is the longest you can stay without people beginning to suspect, I think."
Duncan nodded. "Were you ever father of the bride?"
"Two of them. Elsa in the fifteenth century and Anne in the nineteenth. They were both beautiful brides." Methos looked up. " I wish I could have had a family again. Just once more. It hurts to look at children and think 'I could raise them better than that, and I'm just a crotchety old man.'" For a moment, he looked every day of five thousand years.
"You'll get your chance," Duncan said.
Methos smiled again, silently. "You and I, now..."
"What about you and me?"
"We've been through a lot."
"We have," Duncan said. "And even after all we've been through, you don't think a 'relationship' would work out between us. Why not? Wouldn't it all just come out in the wash anyway, like everything else has?"
"Things do," Methos said. "And yes, I don't think a romantic relationship would work. Just imagine the line of people wanting our heads. We'd have to be hiding all the time, and you hate that. I always change my identity and you never do. It wouldn't work."
"But what about the chemistry? The way you look at me, the way I look at you? Isn't that there?" Duncan stood up. He wasn't sure whether they were arguing only in theory or in reality, but in either case, it was an interesting exercise.
"It's there. On my part at least. You I'm not sure about."
Duncan grinned. "Oh."
"MacLeod..." Methos warned. Duncan ignored it.
He stepped across the short expanse between couch and easy chair, and bent down to look into Methos' eyes. Methos glanced away, but Duncan firmly took Methos' face in his hands and dragged his eyes back to meet Duncan's.
"Don't deny it," he whispered. "You do." And he kissed Methos.
Long and slow and very gentle. Not so much about passion as about affirmation. And Methos kissed him back, lips responding under his with so little reluctance that Duncan was sure Methos must be laughing behind his back at him.
So it was reality. Total reality.
When Duncan finally released him, Methos was flushed and breathing hard. "So you're a wonderful kisser," he said. "The rumors are true."
"It's not about how good a kisser I am," Duncan said, "but how good *we* are together. It's right, can't you see it?"
And the mysterious look dropped back onto Methos' face. "Time will tell," he said.
"What does that mean?"
Methos smiled. "Since today's the day to indulge in history lessons, remember when I told you when we met that my first days, before I took my first head, were a blur?" Duncan nodded. "In actuality, they are two. I lived two pre-Immortal lives, and by all the gods, I cannot remember which one is really mine."
"I don't understand."
"In one life, I was a slave. Forced to work in the fields, in the house, cleaning, cooking, being beaten, the works. In my other life, I was the master of that slave, and I was the one doing the beating and the forcing. I don't know who took whose head. I only know that when I recovered from the Quickening, I had two sets of memories, and no way of knowing which was me and which was not.
"Which do you think you were?" Duncan asked.
"I honestly couldn't tell you," Methos said. "I don't know. I have seen both the master and the slave in the lives I lived later. My fortunes have been strange -- either I am the oppressor or the oppressed, the rich man or the poor. Never in between.
"What are you now?"
"I am a rich man, but live as though I were not. Perhaps that way I can stave off the inevitable poverty that stalks me."
"How very strange," Duncan said. "Has this happened to anyone else, ever?"
"No," Methos said. "Only to me. I have speculated that it happened because both of us were so new at the Game that we were of equal strength, and so the mind of one could not fully absorb the mind of the other."
"It's as reasonable an explanation as any." Duncan yawned. "What time is it, and should I be going home?"
"It's nine o' clock," Methos said, glancing at the clock on the microwave across the room, "and you can stay here, if no one's expecting you. It is raining out. I have an errand to run in a little while, but you may sleep on the couch if you want."
"Not in your bed?"
Methos smiled. "No, MacLeod. Not in my bed. Not tonight." He leaned across to open the cabinet beside his chair. "Here. Blanket and pillow."
Duncan covered himself with the blanket, but did not go to sleep, instead leaning on an elbow and watching Methos sit silent in the easy chair. When the clock struck 9:30, Methos got up.
"Go to sleep, Duncan," he said, calling him by his first name, as he almost never did. "I'll see you later."
Methos switched off all the lights except the one by the front door. Duncan heard several clinks as Methos slid his coat on.
"Methos," he said. "Be careful."
Methos made his way over to stand next to Duncan. "Don't worry, darling," he said. "I will be." And swiftly, as though it were a hastily planned impulse, Methos kissed Duncan on the forehead.
"Goodbye," he whispered, and walked out the door. The smell of April rain drifted in as Methos seemed to drift out, rush of breeze and a door shutting. A air of finality lingered about him.
Approximately two hours later, Duncan woke up, when the power went out.
END