A/N this is a cross between the excellent movie Jerome Bixby's the Man from Earth (available on netflix instant and amazon etc, the production quality is eurgh but the plot, performances, and soundtrack are excellent) and Highlander. The Man from Earth is roughly about a man that confesses to his academic colleagues that he is a 14,000 year old magdalanian caveman but that just brushes the surface, I highly recommend hunting it down.
The man sat crouching near the fire, his back was toward it, his head tilted upward toward the icy pinpricks of stars in the velvet night. The fire hissed and popped as it settled. A compound bow fashioned from wood and animal horn lay at the man's side along with a half dozen handmade and feathered arrows. A noise beyond the man in the black desert drew his immediate attention. He rose to the balls of his feet and silently retrieved the weapons at his side.
He was wearing a long sleeved knit shirt and jeans but barefoot, the cuffs of his jeans rolled up to the middle of his calf. He crept forward, still on the balls of his feet, arrow fitted to the bow, both held in front and slightly to the side of his creeping hunching form. He froze again.
The man looked to be in his mid-thirties, healthy and handsome with a tanned and lined face. Dark eyes and dark hair were black in the diffuse firelight. His face was still, not hunting or suspicious but utterly still as his dark eyes drifted over the night landscape.
"I'd prefer it if you didn't shoot me with that thing John." An accented voice rang out from the darkness.
The man, John's face split wide in a grin and he rose and lowered the weapon.
Another man appeared at the edge of the firelight. He was tall, slightly taller than John with shorter hair, a prominent nose and lean sharp features.
"Methos."
"How's my favorite caveman?" Methos asked.
"Why are you out here?"
"You invited me." Methos snorted and slipped a bag off his shoulder he crouched and fished around in it, when he rose he held an amber bottle shot with gold in the firelight.
John laughed again.
"Yes but I invited you to meet me at the parking area, y'know fourteen miles hard hike that way –" John gestured beyond the fire in the opposite direction from that which Methos had approached.
"I had to take a detour." Methos snorted and cracked the seal on the liquor.
"Right, watchers or another immortal?" John smiled sitting back at the fire, this time facing it.
"Neither, an upset rancher with his daughter's virtue in mind." Methos sighed.
John chuckled.
Methos handed the now open bottle to John, John looked at the label emitted an appreciative whistle and knocked back a mouthful. He handed it back to Methos and Methos sat near enough to swap the bottle easily. He leaned back in the still warm sand and sighed.
"Seriously a rancher's daughter?"
"I got to town a bit early." Methos grunted.
A companionable silence fell.
"Did you tell them?" Methos asked after a few more exchanges of the bottle.
John didn't reply at first. He gazed into the coals of the fire and shifted into a more comfortable position. Methos waited patiently. The desert and the liquor dictated a more…natural interaction none of the pointless hurrying of life away from the desert and the bottle.
"Yeah, yeah I did. Mostly."
Methos quirked an eyebrow at the other man.
John smiled ruefully.
"Mostly?" Methos prompted handing his friend the bottle.
"They panicked, they were frightened, hateful. Thought I'd lost it. So I lied, I let them off the hook." Methos was nodding along a sad twist of his mouth softening his features.
"What did you tell them?"
"I-"He laughed and shook his head, "I told them it was a story that they'd inspired me to create but I'd taken it too far."
"Good excuse. Did it stick?"
John handed the bottle to Methos. He took a long pull and handed it back. John set the bottle in the sand between them.
"Maybe." John looked pained, grieved, but Methos didn't pry.
"Where to next?"
"John Savage has a job offer at UW-Seacouver." John said with a sly smirk.
"Ah, that would be the…anthropologist?" Methos asked pausing to think.
"Yeah, that'd be the one." John agreed with a smile.
"Think I might know a place you can stay." Methos smiled and picked up the bottle.