Initially this was going to be a somewhat darker fic to suit my mood, but after a conversation with a friend, my mood improved and so, probably, did this fic. So I present for your consideration, Labels and it's main thought.
We label the masks we wear.
Disclaimer: Methos, Joe and Joe's Blues Bar in Seacouver, Washington (not really sure where it's supposed to be, but Washington state will do) belong to Bill Panzer and company. I'm just borrowing them.
Methos sighed and threw his beer back, letting the now lukewarm liquid drain down his throat. Joe, who was wiping down the bar, glanced at the immortal.
"Somethin' wrong, man?" Joe asked, moving closer to the older man.
"Just... Did you ever wonder why we're here?" Methos asked. Joe snorted with amusement.
"I think you of all people'd know that." Joe replied. Methos made a face.
"I don't have all the answers. Just most of them." he said, smirking a little. Joe shook his head, a helpless little grin on his face.
"Well, I'll try to answer as best I can. Why are you asking me anyway?" Joe wondered and the smirk dropped off of Methos' face.
"I just... I need to hear a second opinion tonight." Methos said, swinging the beer bottle forward and backward while pointedly not looking at Joe.
"Well," Joe paused and looked around the now-empty bar. "Gimme a minute, okay?" he said and swung over to the doors and locked them, turning the neon sign proclaiming "Joe's Blues Bar" off and he swung back behind the bar, where he felt his most philospical and as he did, he considered that one of the unspoken skills required of being a bartender was the ability to listen and to dispense advice along with the brew out of Milwaukee. "So, what answer did you have in mind?" Joe asked.
"You decide." Methos said, putting his empty bottle down. Joe took the cue and passed the immortal that looked 30-something another beer and grabbed a cold bottle himself.
"All right." Joe paused and took a swig from his cold beer. He was quiet for a while as he searched for a topic to talk about. Methos seemed willing to wait for him to speak, so Joe took his time. A short study of his beer bottle provided a topic for the Vietnam Veteran. "Have you ever thought about labels?" Joe asked suddenly. Dark eyes, older than the oldest building in Seacouver, flickered to look at him.
"Methos, War, Benjamin Adams, Adam Pierson." Methos replied. Joe swallowed his mouthful of beer while shaking his head.
"No, no. Not what I meant. Everyone has a label, not just a name. I mean," Joe lifted his beer, the label pointing towards Methos. "What do you see?" catching the look that could only mean a snarky comment was forthcoming, Joe headed him off at the pass. "The label on the bottle. What do you see?" Joe asked again. Methos peered at the bottle, then shrugged.
"A piece of brightly colored paper, designed to catch the eye and entice the average alcholic into reducing themselves to a blubbering, simpering, drooling mass, passed out in a stack of the very same bottles the poor sap first saw?" Methos asked and Joe blinked. Methos really wasn't himself tonight. But Joe decided rather than fruitlessly trying to figure the immortal out, he would stick to the topic he'd come up with.
"No. Well, yes. Sort of." Joe found himself floundering suddenly, his original point lost in the sea of Methos' sarcasm. "My point," Joe said, sipping from the item in question. "Is that we all have labels that we present to the world." he said, pulling the bar stool over and sitting down, relieved to take the pressure off his thighs, hips and lower back. "Now, look at me. I'm 55, 56 and seeing me objectively, as if you didn't know anything about me, would you guess that I run a bar?" Joe said.
"The consistent smell of alchol suggests either that or you're a lush." Methos said, his lips twitching as he finished off his beer. Seeing Joe comfortable and not being that much of an ass as to ask the man to get up again, Methos leaned over the bar and retrieved another beer for himself and his friend. Joe made a face.
"Well, thank you, Mr. Spock." Joe replied testily, then he shook his head. "All right, look at it this way. The way people are labeled is the same way immortals try to stay hidden. You were a college student, a watcher. You played up the label you presented, Methos. I never would have guessed that you were an immortal. And good money says there isn't one person on that college campus that you go to that at the very least considers you're five thousand years old." Joe said and he saw a flicker in the dark eyes watching him.
"So...We present labels to the world? Or is it masks?" Methos asked. Joe paused to consider his argument.
"We label the masks we wear." Joe said, absently picking at the label of his beer. "The mask I wear when this place is packed, is labeled 'The friendly owner and bartender of this drinking establishment'. The mask you wear on that campus is labeled 'Adam Pierson, affable, broke loser just barely making his way through school'." Joe said and Methos frowned.
"Loser?" he asked, sipping his beer. Joe spread his hands in an expansive guesture.
"We can't control what we're labeled with. Tell me, does trodding around in ratty sweaters, subjectively speaking," Joe said as Methos' eyes darkened to near black. "Carrying a beaten and somewhat holey backpack, bumming rides off friends and," Joe paused, letting a grin surface. "Mooching their beer, not say an affable broke loser to you?" the younger, older looking man asked. Methos, in the face of that grin, couldn't help but grin a little himself.
"You're good." Methos said, gently tipping the head of the bottle towards Joe in a salute. Joe patted the wooden bar he was sitting behind.
"It's the bar. It just eminates that 'I'll listen if you'll talk' vibe." he said. Methos snickered.
"Vibe? That went out with the '70s, Joe." Methos said and Joe grinned brightly.
"Peace, man." he said. Methos reached over and 'clinked' his bottle against Joe's.
"Peace." Methos said and got up to leave. Joe cleared his throat meaningfully, looking at the group of empty bottles. "Ah, yes, right." Methos said and picked up the stack, depositing them, along with Joe's empties, into the proper bin. Just as the immortal reached for his coat, Joe cleared his throat again and tapped the bar with his pointer finger.
"Beer. Bar?" Joe said. Methos grinned that intolerable, mischevious, obviously feeling better grin.
"Bat, Ball, Biscuit. I can do it too." he said and Joe rolled his eyes.
"Pay tab." he said, nodding towards the cash register. "Or Joe tapped out." he added at the slightly dubious look. Methos let out a caveman grunt after a moment.
"Me no understand." he said. Joe leveled a glare at him.
"You no pay, me no serve." he replied, lifting his beer meaningfully. Methos sighed and dug into his wallet. He put a stack of dollar bills down.
"Good night, Joe." Methos said. Joe nodded.
"'Night. Drive safe." he called after him, out of habit.
"What could happen? I die in a crash?" Methos asked, pausing at the door to unlock it.
"And then I'd have to come pick your naked ass up." Joe retorted. Methos laughed lightly.
"Thanks, Joe." he said and breezed out before Joe could ask what he was thanking him for. Joe sighed, heaved himself off the stool and retrieved Methos' money. It wasn't often he asked the immortal to pay, but things had been slow lately and it wasn't as if Methos couldn't afford, ratty sweaters or...
"I'll be damned." Joe said softly, opening the stack of ones to find a 50 dollar bill, with the little note that read 'Because times are hard, it's always good to have a friend with money'. There was even a little smiley face at the end of it. Come to think of it, Joe mused as he dropped the nights take to a vinyl bag for the bank in the morning, I did see him scribbling something onto a napkin earlier. Joe pulled the little note out and sure enough, it was napkin paper. "I wonder, what label was he wearing when he thought this up." Joe murmured to himself as he closed the bar down and locked the doors for the night.
And as he walked to his car, the vinyl bag tucked secretly and safely in his jacket pocket, Joe knew what label it was. "Methos, five thousand year old man, leaving a fifty dollar bill for a friend in need".