Emily stuck her arm out and inspected her pinkened skin, a smile creasing her eyes. "It was totally worth it," she decreed. "I can't remember that last time I've had so much fun!" Though she'd slathered sunblock on herself throughout the weekend, it hadn't been enough against the sun and sweat, and she'd ended up getting patches of burn on her exposed body. "What about you? D'you have a good time? I know the music wasn't exactly your thing…."
Richie's own grin broke through his defenses. "Are you kidding? I had a great time. OK, so some of the acts were a little weird—" He flashed on the group that had done their entire set while hanging upside down by their knees from exercise bars they'd brought up to the stage along with their guitars—"but it didn't rain, the food was good—and no one got sick from it. And I had some pretty awesome company." Leaning in, he met Emily's lips in a kiss. She had a fruit flavored lip gloss on in a flavor that defied identification, though he tried. When he finally pulled back, it was only because he felt stares from the other passengers in the bus station piling on them. "I can't remember the last time I had so much fun, either."
It's the truth, too, and one he was happy to share, though she couldn't possibly understand all the layers that formed it. They'd made it! A whole weekend together, much of it spent dancing or sipping cold drinks in what little shade they could find in the tree-spotted park like they were a completely normal couple. She'd introduced him to a lot of bands that had name-recognition in her generation—and none whatsoever in his—giving them so much conversational fodder that he was easily able to steer any discussion away from inconvenient facts. There'd been no Immortal interruptions: no swords, no Challenges, no one recognizing him who shouldn't. For whole hours at a time, he'd managed to forget that he wasn't the guy he appeared to be.
Now, here they were, killing time while they waited for Emily's bus to get called and she'd managed to hit him with a stark reminder. It was always the little things that tripped him up.
"Yet, without a mark to show for it." She sidled closer in the pretext of wanting to compare the colors of their arms. Next to his tan, her burn looked painful enough that he was surprised she could joke about it. "I've never known someone who didn't need to use sunblock at all."
Just like that, the high of honesty crashed. "I guess I just have good skin," he answered, trying to keep his gaze from sliding away from hers with the slipperiness of the half-truth. He could burn; he did burn. And his Quickening healed it almost as fast as it happened. Fortunately, his Quickening didn't treat tans as a kind of damage that also needed to be healed. That would be harder to explain for someone of his coloration.
"Normally, I do too." She frowned at her shoulder, which was pink enough to look like part of a shading pattern extending from the strap of her shirt. "I hope this is healed by the weekend. It'll be a bitch-and-a-half to compete with a sunburn."
Eager to keep the subject off him, Richie latched on to this opening. "You have a competition? I thought the semester was over. Do sports last longer into the summer, or something?" This, at least, wasn't something she wasn't going to be suspicious at him not knowing; he'd already explained that he'd never been to college and had no plans to go.
"Well, we don't exactly get to emstop/em training just because finals are over, you know?" She pursed her lips like she was considering the merits of the idea, then rejected it with a shake of her head. The "E" pendant on her necklace caught in the dip of her collarbone with the action and Richie freed it with a light touch that felt almost natural and that earned him a sweet smile.
"Actually, it's more like an exhibition. We're putting on a show for the local high schools. It's a recruitment thing. Less judging and more judgment." Emily brightened. "You should come out and see it. You could meet emmy/em roommate—she'll actually be in town this weekend, hard as that is to believe—and, then…" She trailed off before she could issue the best part of the invitation because the crackly announcement they'd both been anticipating came over the speakers. Emily sighed. "That's my bus."
"I'll get your bag," Richie offered.
She glanced down to where the navy Jansport was tucked between her feet. "I'd tell you I could carry it myself, but, truthfully, I'd like you have an excuse to walk me out to the bus. Also, I had no idea a couple CDs could get so heavy. It'd have made a lot more sense to put everything on iTunes for those of us who don't really have the space to own CDs. Anyway. So, about next weekend…?"
emYes/em, he thought. emHell, yes/em, followed immediately with a strong reminder to emstay cool, Ryan/em. They'd made it through one weekend, but the longer they were together and the more serious they got, the harder it was going to be to make those inevitable tough decisions. It was better for both of them to keep things casual. Ish. "Let me check with Me-Matt first and see if he can cover my classes. I'll text you later, OK?" He sped through the last few words in effort to cover up his slip, lunging for the backpack at the same time.
The sense of another Immortal pushed through his awareness. He started to tense, his weight shifting for better balance, his free arm coming back to his waist in the anticipated need to strike out in defense — and then he caught himself. This was exactly what he didn't want his new girlfriend to see. Not yet.
At least they were in a public place. Whoever the other Immortal was, he wouldn't dare attack Richie in front of this many witnesses, assuming he could even pick Richie out of the crowd at all. With that, he got an idea. Remembering Liam's lesson, he forced his shoulders to relax and for his eyes to stay on Emily instead of searching the room as she agreed that a text later that evening would be fine and that she was sure Matt would agree because he'd seemed so happy to meet her.
He was barely aware of the next few minutes: escorting Emily out to the bus, helping her board, kissing her goodbye. It was getting harder to pull away from her with each visit, and the flush of heat from her touch only thickened the fog over his mind.
He was so sunk.
It was just icing on the cake that the Immortal waiting for him inside the bus station was Methos, lounging against one of the blocky support beams with his hands shoved deep in the pockets of his longcoat. Waiting, no doubt, to impart some kind of convoluted lesson about…whatever it was he thought Richie needed a lesson on this week. He'd been so good about making himself scarce during those parts of the weekend when Richie and Emily had to be at the apartment, so what was so important that he had to show up now? Letting him have those few final minutes to enjoy his weekend of normalcy was clearly too much to ask.
Richie cast a glance around the waiting room, in case Methos wasn't the only other Immortal in attendance. Plenty of other people were looking their way, though none with that particular expression of suspicious wariness that two Immortals always shared on finding each other. The fast beat of some pop song sprang from the speakers, its rhythm loud enough to puncture the disgruntled murmuring of the bus station's denizens without being loud enough to identify. Richie squeezed his eyes shut, blocking out the one annoyance while he tried to figure out what to do about the other. "What're you doing here?" he finally asked, deciding on the direct route.
A mirthless smile flashed over Methos' face, and he turned and walked right back out the main door—with Richie following like he was being lead on a string. Only a few paces separated them, so Richie lengthened his stride to catch up, just as a businessman with his wheeled-briefcase stepped onto the sidewalk between them, nearly getting body-blocked for his poor timing.
"Matt, wait up!" Richie called, while he fumbled with righting the luggage and getting out of the businessman's way before this chance encounter also turned into a bigger deal than he wanted to mess with.
Methos spun around, walking backward for a few steps until Richie finally reached him. A sudden gust of wind rippled his hair and tugged at the bottom edges of his coat, though everything in between held defiantly steady. "That wasn't so difficult, was it? A little more practice and I think you'll have it down."
"Seriously, man? That's what you couldn't wait another ten minutes for? I told you I'd get it right." Richie bit back the admission that he'd only barely managed it. "Or was there some kind of emteachable moment/em in Emily's departure that I'm supposed to be learning from? I'm not going to turn around and find Angie or Nikki getting off the next bus, am I?" Running into his former foster sister Maria had been shocking enough for both of them. He couldn't imagine what would happen if he encountered one of his old friends who had attended his funeral.
"No," he stated, simply, quietly. He'd admitted that Richie and Maria actually meeting had been an accident — and he'd apologized for it — but he spoke as if he still regretted it. "I…"
They'd reached Richie's motorcycle, and Methos stopped mid-sentence and nodded significantly at the young tired-looking mother who passed them with a screaming toddler in tow. Richie wasn't always so good at picking up hints, especially when his mouth was running while someone tried to deliver one, but this one he got. He shut up. Soon enough, the coast cleared and Methos pulled back one side of his coat and extracted the sword he'd concealed within. Richie's sword.
"Wha—?" Richie started. Removing the sword temporarily left the side of the coat unbalanced until Methos resettled its weight with a practiced roll of his shoulders that made it clear that Richie's was not the only sword secreted inside.
"I thought you'd want this back. Heaven forbid you go a minute longer than necessary unarmed."
Richie took the sword and slipped it quickly into the scabbard attached to his bike before any of the other approaching travelers could see what he held. The explanation, though, wasn't so easily accepted. He'd done fine the whole weekend, granted the music fest had a strict "no weapons" policy which meant that everyone in attendance was unarmed. "Uh-huh. So, what's the real reason? Because I gotta tell ya, man, you look like you're about to melt in that coat, and I don't believe for one second that you put it on and came all the way out here just because you wanted to be altruistic."
"Altruistic? That's an awfully big word—"
"Want me to define it for you?" Richie interrupted, before Methos could add the 'for someone so young' that Richie could smell coming. Even so, he leaned back against the bike, legs crossed at the ankles. He had nowhere to go and nothing that needed his attention for the next few hours, so there was no reason not to enjoy the bickering. Besides, if he held out long enough, he might just be able to talk Methos into buying him a drink.
Methos flashed that smile again, like he was on to Richie and was sorry he couldn't keep playing along. "Alas," he said, "now that your girlfriend is safely out of the way, there is that small matter that needs to be taken care of."
Richie squinted back toward the bus station and fiddled with the straps on his helmet while he mentally worked through what Methos was saying. When he did, he sighed. So much for not having plans. "Lemme guess: It's my responsibility to drive up and down the streets of New York City, hunting for one specific person who may or may not still be in the state because that's what the great Connor MacLeod would do?"
He already knew the answer; by moving to the city in Connor's absence, he'd accidentally stumbled into becoming its protector from the Game the way Connor had designated himself to be. "D'you have any idea how long that's going to take?" Or how impossible it would be? The ability for one Immortal to sense another wasn't that strong.
"That's why I'm going to help," Methos answered. "Drop me off at Central Park. I'll call you if I find him."
Richie's mouth fell open. Methos was going to emhelp/em? He was volunteering to go head hunting instead of holing up in a nice air-conditioned bar somewhere? That explained the swords, but… "Why?" he blurted out.
"Because this is a mess that needs to be cleaned up once and for all. The police are already involved. What's next, the media? Our lives are not meant for public consumption. #WhoWantstoLiveForever." Methos shuddered, his face paling.
The visceral horror of the idea was too much for Richie to process. He could only nod in silent recognition that Methos probably — certainly — had plenty of reasons beyond the obvious to want to keep mortals from learning about Immortals, and specifically himself. Richie certainly didn't want to have his life exposed to the world; it was bad enough that the Watchers tracked him. He didn't need ordinary paparazzi too. Speaking of the Watchers:
"OK, but, Central Park is embig/em. Wouldn't it make more sense for us to split it up?" He narrowed his eyes in accusation. "Unless you have some eminsider/em info on where to look?"
Methos dismissed the idea with a flip of his hand. "You read the same Chronicle I did. There wasn't anything useful in it on how to find him now." He sighed. "But there emare/em a lot of homeless people in Central Park, and they have their own networks of information. Maybe someone will know something that will help us narrow down where to look."
"That … actually makes sense," Richie conceded. Just because the Watchers didn't know anything, that didn't mean nobody did. emAsking/em around certainly made more sense than driving around, hoping to pick out one specific Immortal presence. "I should have thought of that."
With a rumble a bus ponderously turned on to the street in front of them. Richie glanced up just in time to see Emily wave to him through one of the windows. When she realized he saw her, she lifted her other hand and formed a heart with her fingers. Richie managed to a tight smile back.
What, he wondered, did she think he and Methos were talking about? Would she still make that finger-heart if she knew?
"You really like her," Methos commented, his expression thoughtful.
Richie released another sigh. "Yeah … I do. But that's not what's important right now." He straddled the seat of his bike and settled his helmet into place.
Methos tucked his hands in his pockets, drawing his coat tight and turned in the direction of the subway entrance. He took two steps, then swung back to face Richie. "Considering your history with him, you'd better hope he doesn't learn about that." Without waiting for a response, he turned again and continued on his way, quickly melting into the masses.
The fumes from the busses' exhausts left heat lines in the air, and in the distance car horns blared. Richie noted these facts as Methos' parting words sunk in and his perspective changed. While he'd been willing to take up the duty Connor had left him, now he recognized that he emwanted/em to.