It Takes Two
Authors: Ekat and Katie Grogan
Rating: G
Disclaimers: he made us do it.
Summary: How many writers does it take to keep a Muse occupied?
******************************
Ekat trudged into the hospital with her usual early morning non-enthusiasm. The gray of the Rochester morning was only added to by the fact that the bag slung on her left shoulder was incredibly heavy with the reports she had taken home to work on for her 9 am meeting.
As she walked through the halls to her office she looked for a way to lose the person following behind her.
"I don't know why you just didn't call in. I mean, you still have chapter three to write," MethosMuse complained to her.
"I already told you in the car, I have a meeting this morning to try and convince the State that they should continue funding the program. How would it look if I just bailed?" she mumbled under her breath.
"And just what am I supposed to do while you are busy playing 'Hospital Professional'? Last time I went and talked to the patients you yelled at me."
"That's because they are PSYCH patients and I was not about to have you encouraging them in their psychoses. And I don't recall inviting you to tag along with me to work. You could have stayed home and watched TV and played with the cats," she shot back.
"Your cats hate me and I already looked in the guide, there's nothing worth watching today."
She sighed. Someday she would learn that it's pointless to argue with him. Silently she wondered if beheading an imaginary Muse would do the same thing as beheading a "real" Immortal would.
She opened the door to the stairwell for her wing and began the climb from the ground floor to the second.
"Why can't we take the elevator like normal people?" the Muse complained.
"Because I don't want to. Besides the exercise is good for you."
"In case you have forgotten I am not the one trying to lose twenty pounds so that she can fit back into a certain black bodice to impress a certain Australian who happens to resemble a certain Muse."
"That is not why I'm trying to lose weight and we both know it," she snapped. "And just because Bruce looks like you doesn't mean anything."
"Uh-huh. Whatever you say." Ekat opted not to dignify his comment with a reply. Instead she unlocked the door to the psychiatric emergency room and walked in. Ignoring the Muse's protests she walked into the main triage area, grabbed her time card, punched in and went to her office.
The Muse caught up with her as she was hanging up her knee length black leather coat. "Hey, I haven't seen your new office yet. Is it really all yours? No roommate?"
"It's all mine," she said as she pushed past him to turn on her computer. As the computer booted up MethosMuse looked around.
"Hey, there is only one chair. Where am I supposed to sit?"
"You could wait in the car."
"You're in a wonderful mood this morning," he observed as he picked up a pile of paper off the windowsill and set them on the ground. He then sat down in the freshly cleared space and leaned against the glass.
"Well, it could be worse, and it just might if this meeting with the Office of Mental Health doesn't go my way. Speaking of which, I have to print out this report for the meeting, now be a good little Muse and be quiet for the next 20 minutes."
Twenty minutes later, the reports were printed and Ekat headed for the door. MethosMuse stood up and began to follow her. She stopped and placed her hand against his chest. "No way. You stay here."
"But why?"
"Because I am not about to go into a high powered meeting with a bored and over active Muse sitting in the back of the room trying to distract me. You are staying here."
"And if I don't?"
"I stop writing about you for 2 months. Keep it up and it will be four before I even think about writing a scene with any bedroom fun. I have other Muses you know. You just keep driving them away before they can speak."
"You…you wouldn't dare."
Her green eyes glared over the top rim of her glasses. "Try me."
He looked down at her, assessing her sincerity. He sighed in resignation. "Alright, you win. I'll stay here."
She ran her fingers through her shoulder length auburn hair and smiled in triumph. "Good. I'll only be gone an hour," she said as she turned to head back out the door. "And don't touch anything!" she called out over her shoulder.
**************
Two and a half hours later, Ekat returned to her office in a much better mood than when she left. The meeting went well and the State had agreed to look into alternative solutions for the problems that had arisen. She walked in to find MethosMuse sitting at her desk, playing on her computer.
"I thought I told you not to touch anything."
He looked up at her. "You did, but I could only entertain myself with the goldfish so long," he said pointing to the fish bowl on her desk.
"Well, get up, I have work to do," she said, grabbing him by his sweater and lifting him out of her chair. She sat down and logged into her email account and began wading through the 120 messages waiting for her. "Hey I got 3 more reviews for 'Whatever Happened to Saturday Night?' So far every one has been positive."
"I still can't believe you wrote me running around in drag," the Muse said as he sat down on the windowsill.
"Well, you're the one who was dancing around my bedroom on Sunday singing at the top of his lungs along with the CD. If you had just sat there quietly I would not have envisioned you singing 'Sweet Transvestite' and I wouldn't have had to mention the story idea to Katie. If you should blame anyone it should be her. She is the one who said she would track me down if I didn't write it."
"Writing's one thing. POSTING is another. Do you have any idea what this is doing to my image?"
"Like I said, all you had to do was sit there quietly while I was working on chapter two of 'The Secrets That You Keep.' But no you had to entertain yourself."
"Speaking of 'Secrets', when are you going to write chapter three? I want to know what happens next."
"So are you going to tell me what happens next or not?" He whined.
"No. If you want to know so badly, you should have stayed home and pestered the JimmyMuse. I can't write until he tells me what's next," she countered.
"Oh no. He's has been doing nothing but sitting around being depressed and sorry for himself. I'd much rather hear your retelling of his moaning."
"Then you are just going to have to wait." Ekat clicked on the instant message program. "Oh look, Katie's on."
"Oh great. Your partner in 'Rocky Horror' Crime. Just leave me out of it."
Ekat smiled. If all she had to do to shut the Muse up was to talk to Katie, her day was about to get even better.
*****************
Someone was knocking at Katie's door long before she was ready to get up this morning. She looked at her clock, and saw that the alarm was about to go off anyway so she sat up. She was surprised to see her mom poke her head through the door, since she was usually gone before Katie was even up. "You should call the office and see if you have to go in," her mom said. Katie frowned, confused. "School's been canceled and a lot of businesses are closed, and a lot of the roads are a mess."
The words "snow day" were running through her head, but that was the only coherent thought she had. Eventually she found the numbers she had to call and told them she wouldn't be able to make it in. Her dad worked in the same area, in fact they usually carpooled, and since the highway they took was notorious for bad traffic and numerous accidents, it would be impossible with the heavy white stuff several inches thick covering the roads. It was cold in the house, so she pulled on a warm robe over her blue and green flannel pajamas.
That done, Katie had to decide what to do. Her neighbor's car was stuck in the ditch, so driving anywhere probably wasn't a good idea, the cable was out, and since she'd gone to bed early the night before she wasn't ready to go back to sleep. She looked outside for a while, listening to the wind blowing and watching the snow continue to fall. A large storm had to have hit them during the night; it was well above freezing but the snow was still around. Usually in Colorado it would snow then melt right away.
More time was spent listening to her mom's story about how she hadn't heard the phone, so she almost didn't know that school was canceled, and she almost hadn't called the teachers she was supposed to on the phone tree, many times. Eventually she got away and found herself bored again. She wasn't awake enough to eat or continue writing her story about Methos and the horsemen, so she went over to her computer. She was surprised when she turned on the monitor and saw the Windows ME login screen asking for her password. Apparently the power had blinked at some point.
She signed on and the computer took forever to start up as usual. Swearing to herself to upgrade the motherboard and processor as soon as she had the money, she checked her mail. Not much there, just a few posts from the Methos Scrolls list with more song titles. She decided to start making a big list and post it on her site, but again she wasn't really awake enough to do it. "Later," she told herself.
She logged on to AIM, but no one was on yet so she left it open and started surfing the web. The phone rang and she answered it. "Hello?"
"What are you doing home?" her sister's voice replied. Katie only rolled her eyes. It was her annoying sister. They shared a room, but fortunately Beth didn't come home from school often.
"It's a snow day," was all Katie said.
"What?" Beth whined. "We only got an inch!"
'Tough,' Katie thought, but she didn't say it out loud.
"Is Dad there? I couldn't get him on his cell or at the office."
"Yeah, he's staying home today too. I'll go get him."
Katie passed the phone off to her dad and returned to her room. She could hear a vacuum running, so she turned her radio on louder than usual. That way, if her mom called her out to help with chores, she wouldn't be able to hear. It also blocked out the classical CD playing on the stereo downstairs, which she wouldn't mind listening too except that it was distorted too much by the walls.
She was reconsidering going back to bed since the only thing she could think to do was clean her room, and that really wasn't something she wanted to do. Although it could certainly use it, with clean clothes still in the laundry basket, the sweaters and flannel shirts she liked to wear instead of her jacket on the few surfaces. It wouldn't take long, her room was pretty small, there wasn't even room to leave the beds unbunked.
Then she heard the familiar creak of an opening door on her computer. She opened the window for the Instant Messenger. Cool, Ekat was on. She snickered, remembering the conversation they'd had a few days ago about the Rocky Horror Picture Show that resulted in "Whatever Happened to Saturday Night." Wondering what today's might result in, she sent her greetings.
************************
"It's over fifty out, what does she mean she has a snow day?" MethosMuse cried.
"It's over fifty here in Rochester, NEW YORK," Ekat said, stressing the state. "She lives in Colorado, you know, where they live a mile above sea level. Less insulation from the atmosphere. With as many degrees as you have, I'm surprised one isn't in meteorology."
"You should learn to respect your elders," he quipped.
"Elders?!?! Might I remind you, my dear Muse, that the character you are based on may, in Canon, be over 5,000 years old, but the character was only created in 1994? Last time I checked my birthday came first." She sat there glaring at the computer screen muttering to herself.
At that moment her boss walked into the office. He gave her a quizzical look as he walked past her and into his office. "You okay?" he called out to her.
"Yeah, I'm fine. Just having a philosophical debate with myself," she called back.
"Oh okay. You let me know if you need me to go be a rabid Rottweiler to someone."
"I will," Ekat called back. MethosMuse started giggling. She looked over at him. "What are you laughing about?"
"I just can't see Dr. Middle-Aged Doogie Houser being a rabid gerbil let alone a Rottweiler."
Ekat ignored her Muse's chuckles and returned to chatting with Katie.
KATIE: gotta go eat now.
Ekat sighed. If Katie was leaving to find food it meant that MethosMuse would start bugging his writer again.
EKAT: Have fun
KATIE: Sure, "fun with cereal". Is that anything like those Lucky Charms graphs I did in school?
MethosMuse looked up, his stomach rumbling. "Did she say Lucky Charms?" With that he disappeared.
***************
Katie set her away message and was about to go get breakfast when a six foot muse tackled her from behind.
"You're gonna share right? I mean she never feeds me and the only beer in the house has been in the fridge for 2 years. You'll take care of me won't you? PLEEEEEEAAASSSSEEE!!!"
Katie turned and stared at him. Having Methos in her house would be cool. Having Peter Wingfield in her house would also be cool. Having a MethosMuse that just happened to look like both of them begging to be fed cereal was most definitely not cool.
"Quiet!" she said quietly but emphatically. "I don't think my mom would appreciate having strange men running around the house."
"Oh but please, I'm so hungry, and thirsty," he pleaded theatrically. "I promise to be good, I won't even say a word! Wouldn't you want to help someone who was starving to death?" He gave her his most innocent, pleading look.
"Yeah, right," Katie grumbled. "I'm not like MacLeod you know, you can't guilt trip me into doing things for you. Now I'm going to go eat, and you're staying here!"
MethosMuse looked around the room, at the dirty clothes overflowing the laundry basket, the books and papers cluttering the desk, and the unmade bunk beds. He found the remote for the TV, but when he turned it on there was nothing but static. He jiggled the mouse to turn off the screen saver and was prompted for a password. He turned to her. "Uh-uh," he stated. "I'm not staying here alone. I can't even get on the computer!"
"And you won't," Katie smirked. "I have that set for when my sister stays here, but it's just as good at keeping you out too." She retied the belt of her robe and left the room. As soon as she reached to the staircase, he was beside her. "Hey, I told you to go to the room! Go back or I'll send you to Ekat."
"This generation has no respect for their elders."
"You keep saying that, but it still doesn't have any effect. Besides, how much respect am I supposed to show a useless Muse?"
"I AM NOT USELESS! I help provide hours of entertainment, I am a font of wisdom, and I tell great stories. Useless my arse."
"I have my own Muse, thank you very much."
"Really? Where is he?" MethosMuse started looking around for his counterpart.
"Sleeping, or else I'd be working on my story right now."
By then they were in the kitchen, and Katie's thirteen-year-old brother was in there already eating his own breakfast. He only glanced at Katie, used to seeing her walking around the house talking to herself.
The muse started looking through the cabinets until he found the one with the cereal. "Hey!" he said. "Where's the Lucky Charms? You said you had some."
Katie sighed. "No, I was referring to those cheesy graphs I did in school, where you graph how many of each shape you had. We haven't had Lucky Charms for a couple of weeks."
"You don't expect me to eat this!" he asked, holding up a box of Cheerios. "It tastes like cardboard."
"No, I don't expect you to eat. Remember, you're the one who beamed yourself over here, or however you got here."
In response, he crossed his arms and went to a corner to pout. Relieved and unaware she should be worried, Katie began eating her Cheerios mixed together with Rice Krispies. She read the comics from the day before, enjoying the momentary quiet, so she missed it when the gleam came into MethosMuse's eye.
"You do realize that you owe me, don't you?" he said.
"Really, how's that?"
"You're the one who encouraged Ekat in that Rocky horror."
Katie resisted the urge to groan at the bad pun. "You're the one who gave her the inspiration. She said you were dancing around the room to the sound track. Speaking of which…." Her voice trailed off as she ran upstairs to her room. After searching her CD's for a moment, she pulled one out and put it on her stereo. A few track changes, and "Sweet Transvestite" was playing at high volume. "Dance! Dance!" she egged him on, grinning at his discomfort. He crossed his arms in refusal.
"Well, it's obvious I'm not going to get fed. I'm out of here, maybe Ekat will have realized how much she misses me when I'm gone and start to appreciate me more."
Then he was gone.
*********
"Kids these days," MethosMuse grumbled. Ekat jumped at the sound of his voice behind her. She had been caught up in analyzing the data from the monthly ER census reports that she didn't notice that he had returned. She groaned. She had hoped that he would be gone for at least an hour so she could get some work done.
"What happened?" she asked turning her chair around to look at him. He was back to sitting on the windowsill, sorting through the CDs she had piled next to her radio.
"Nothing," he lied. Ekat smiled. He only took on that tone of voice when he was hiding something from her. He started to read the names of the CDs out loud. "Jim Byrnes, Metallica, Billy Idol, Mozart, Jim Byrnes, Garth Brooks, Chicago, Celtic, Celtic, Celtic, Meatloaf, Wagner, The Who, Apocalyptica, Schoolhouse Rock, Jethro Tull, The Dixie Chicks. Oh good, you left it home." He put the CDs back down.
"Left what home?" she demanded.
"Never mind. Has anyone told you that you have a very eclectic taste in music?"
Ekat crossed her arms in across her chest. "All the time. And you, dear Muse, are changing the subject. What happened? I'm almost afraid to ask but, where did you go?"
"I went to Katie's. That brat refused to feed me. All she had was Cheerios and Rice Krispies," he protested.
"I don't blame her for not feeding you. And what is wrong with Cheerios or Rice Krispies?" she asked. "I happen to like both."
"But combined? I had to watch her pour the two together and then eat them! That's disgusting!"
"Disgusting? Aren't you the one who offered to make sea anemones for MacLeod? You even made a point of saying that it looked like road tar. Not to mention that you have admitted to eating honey coated ants and peacock brains." Ekat teased.
"You, know, I really hate the fact that you managed to get copies of all my episodes. You and your perfect memory for stupid TV trivia can get really irritating sometimes."
"Deal," she said leaning her chair back. "So what did Katie do to you to make you so grumpy?"
"I already told you. She made me just watch as she ate breakfast."
"Somehow I doubt that very much. But if you won't tell me, that's fine. I have work to do." She turned back to the report on her desk. Bored, MethosMuse stood up and wandered around her fairly small office. He stopped in front of a print of her favorite painting, "The Accolade."
"I painted this you know," he said, smirk flashing across his face.
She didn't look up at him. "You did not. Edmund Blair Leighton painted that in 1901."
"And how do you know he wasn't me?" the Muse said, turning to face her, posture one of light-hearted challenge.
Ekat turned her head so that she could look at him without moving her body. "One- we have already established that you are a figment of my imagination. Two- you are based on a fictional character. Three- if you had painted it you would have made it more historically accurate," she said, counting each reason out with her fingers.
"Historically inaccurate? How so?" he asked looking back at the print.
"Well, let's see, we can start out with the fact that it is a Viscountess knighting someone. Only a knight can make a knight, remember. Then there's the fact that Sir Edmund combined three different eras of clothing styles for her dress. Then there's the fact that the eras he did pick don't coincide with the clothing of the guy being knighted, that his helm does not agree with the time period of his armor, and the heraldry is just wrong. If you had painted it, you would have made it closer to true history."
MethosMuse snorted, but continued to look at the print. Ekat glanced up at the clock on her wall. Cursing under her breath, she stood up, grabbed her keys and her lunch and headed for the door. "Where are you going?" the muse asked.
"It's noon. Lunch time. I have to meet Kelly. I'll be back in an hour. You stay here."
"But why?" he whined. "I'm hungry too."
"Kelly already thinks I'm strange. I don't need you tagging along to verify it. And after we eat we are going for our daily walk around the hospital. You complained about climbing a flight of stairs, I don't need you griping about the fact that we are doing a one and a half mile hike."
The Muse commandeered her chair, sprawling to the best of his ability. The crossed his arms and looked every bit like a 3 year-old sulking. "But I'm staaaar-ving," he moaned.
"There's a power bar in the center drawer of my desk. You can have it if you want." The Muse responded by screwing up his face that Ekat once dubbed "the spinach face", because it looked like the faces babies make when mom feeds them strained spinach. "Eat it or don't, I don't care. Just stay put will ya?"
MethosMuse rubbed his chin as he thought about his options. "Maybe I'll go see what Katie's up to. Maybe I can roust her Muse and he and I can go have some fun."
"Leave Katie alone," Ekat said glaring at her Muse. "She's one of my beta-readers and I don't need any of my beta-readers annoyed at me because my Muse had to go and annoy them. And I'm still serious about my threat… no more stories with you having any fun if you continue to be a general pain in the rear. Do I make myself clear?"
He crossed his arms and glared up at her. "Crystal," he sneered. Ekat smiled triumphantly and left the office.
MethosMuse waited one whole minute after the office door closed before he broke out in a grin and disappeared.
*******************************
MethosMuse appeared in Katie's bedroom and found her in bed, asleep. He noticed that she had gotten dressed though, in a turtleneck and sweater with jeans. She hadn't noticed his being there, and his grin grew wider as he stepped towards the bed. His hands reached out, moving slowly, inch by inch, then he attacked. His fingers moved as he tickled her sides, but she didn't respond beyond a lazy hand swiping at him.
He frowned, then wondered if her clothes were too thick. He was fighting two layers after all, and that sweater was pretty thick, so he carefully slid his hands under. "It's not like I'm a stranger,' he told himself. "I've talked to her plenty of times online. Not that she ever takes my advice," he muttered under his breath.
Again his fingers waggled, but the only response was a glare. "I'm not ticklish, so would you please stop that," she told him.
He took his hands off of her and stood up. "What do you mean, you're not ticklish!" he demanded. "It's no fun if you're not ticklish." He looked around the room. "Is the cable back yet? There's nothing to do here."
Katie smirked. "In my family, if you're ticklish, you're a target. My youngest brother and my sister are tickled at any time and they hate it. Eventually, I got used to it. Besides, you mean to tell me that tickling people is you're sole source of entertainment? And yes, the cable's on, but there's nothing interesting to watch. You should have been here earlier, you could have helped shovel the driveway."
He made a face at the thought of doing manual labor. He was the Muse of a five thousand-year- old man, he had more important things to do! Then he smirked. One of those things just happened to be bugging Katie. "Oh, I think I can think of a few other things to keep me occupied. Chines water torture?"
"Get the rug wet and you face my mom." Katie smiled sweetly. "She teaches kindergarten, so I'm sure she can handle you."
MethosMuse looked offended. "I am not childish." He moved closer to her, where she was sitting at the edge of the bed. His hands darted out, moving toward her but stopping a few inches away. "I'm not touching you." Another hand reached out and stopped short. "Still not touching you."
It went on for another minute, but Katie didn't respond besides looking bored and slightly vindicated at winning. It wasn't hard, since he'd proven himself childish without any real provocation.
Katie got up to check the email that had come in during her nap.
MethosMuse sat on the old, ugly, brown recliner rejected from the family room years ago and watched her.
When she was done with the mail, she pulled out the book she'd been reading, Phule's Paradise by Robert Asprin.
MethosMuse watched, not blinking once.
Katie thought about flipping him off, but decided not to encourage him.
Eventually she got tired of it. "I used to baby-sit. I know all the tricks. Now I didn't think I was all that interesting, but if you want to keep staring, go ahead."
The reverse psychology worked and he turned the TV on, only to turn it off a minute later after flipping through the channels. "So where's your Muse?"
"Skiing for all I know." She looked up and glared at him. "Or maybe he got bored here and decided to bug someone else. Is that a trait common in Muses? Never around when there's actually time to write?"
"Okay, I'll be your Muse!" he said cheerily. "If Ekat won't write my stuff, you can! Okay, chapter three…"
His voice trailed off when he realized Katie wasn't doing anything. "I'm not writing for you. That's Ekat's story, she'll finish it when she wants."
"But she isn't!" he whined. Katie looked less than sympathetic, having had her own part-time Muse. She picked up the remote for her stereo and brandished it threateningly.
"Behave, or I play your favorite song," she said almost innocently.
MethosMuse launched himself at her and pinned her to the floor. She was small, and it wasn't hard for him to get the remote control away. He stood triumphantly, while Katie rubbed a shoulder as she sat up.
When he saw that, MethosMuse froze, remembering Ekat's warning about bugging the beta-readers. What would she do if he hurt one? Immediately he bent down to help her up. "Should I get you some ice? I used to be a doctor, here let me look."
Katie swatted him away. "Would you stop? It's not even bruised. Geez, you're acting like I'm a wimp or something. But you can bet Ekat's going to here about this."
"NO!!! Please, PLEASE! I'll do anything, whatever you want, just don't tell her I was here! She said that she wouldn't write a story where I have any fun anymore if I bug you." He whimpered pitifully. "I know where sunken treasure is! You'll have to give me some time to find it exactly, but you'll be rich! You keep complaining about sharing with your sister, you'll be able to move out!"
Katie shook her head. "How gullible do you think I am? You're a creation of imagination, and not even my imagination!"
Methos looked around, trying to find something to bribe Katie with when he saw the clock. He groaned after adding two hours to account for the time difference. "No, she's going to be back soon. I have to go."
"Really?" Katie asked hopefully.
"Please don't tell her about this," he begged once more. "I'll owe you! Anytime you think of someway for me to pay you back, I'll do it! Promise!"
With that he faded away.
************
Ekat was sitting at her desk, head propped up on her right hand, analyzing yet another spreadsheet when MethosMuse rematerialized in her office. She heard the rustling of his clothing as he appeared. She felt his hands on his shoulders as he began to massage the tension out of them. He smiled in triumph as she moaned in appreciation of his skill.
"So," she purred as she leaned back into his ministrations, "where did you go?"
"Go?' he asked innocently. He reached down and removed her glasses and began to massage her temples.
"Yes, dear, go. I'm not so blind to not notice that you were not here waiting for me when I got back from lunch."
"I just went out. It's a nice day I went for a walk." He began massaging her scalp.
"Would that walk have been to go back over to Katie's?" Ekat allowed her muscles to relax. It had been a long day and trying to deal with the State AND a bored Muse was more than she had really wanted to handle.
"Um…" the Muse said, groping for an answer, fingers digging deeper into his writer's scalp..
"I should probably tell you that she already told me," Ekat said, a large grin on her face. She opened her eyes and looked up at him when she felt him stop the massage. He had a terrified look on his face. He reached down and spun her chair around to face him. He dropped down on his knees and knelt before her, his hands pressed on her knees.
"I'm sorry. I know you said not to go and bother your beta-readers, but I...I…I just needed someone to talk to. And her Muse has abandoned her. I couldn't just let her sit and be alone like that." He looked up at Ekat his eyes begging for forgiveness. "And well, you know me. It's really bad for me to be alone and bored. I figured if I went and talked to Katie I would be less inclined to use your computer and hack into some mainframe I'm not supposed to be in, or try to take your goldfish for a walk, or go talk to the patients."
Ekat sat there with a delighted smirk on her face. "And what did you do while you were there?"
MethosMuse blinked up at her, surprised to find that she was not angry. He sat back on his heels. "We talked."
"About what?" she asked, prompting him to continue.
"About a lot of things. How her brother and sister are ticklish. How she used to baby-sit. How her Muse has vanished for parts unknown and left her while in the middle of a story. About how I used to be a doctor."
"Uh-huh. Did anything happen that I should know about?"
"Why? What did she tell you? I didn't' do it. I swear," he said, voice going on the defensive.
Ekat leaned forward, took his face in her hands and brought it close to hers. "She didn't tell me anything other than you stopped by again. " He relaxed as her words sank in. "However, from your actions I am guessing that something did happen. Now since Katie didn't tattle-tell on you, I'm going to let it slide. However, this is the last time you are to bother her. Do you understand me?" He nodded, which was difficult as she still had his face grasped between her hands. "Good. Now you are to just sit here and be quiet until it's time to go. If you vanish on me again to go pester her I will erase the disk I have that has all my ideas for stories for you that you might find fun to tell me about."
"I promise," he whispered. "No more bothering Katie." She leaned further down, and kissed him on his forehead before releasing his face.
"Good." With that she turned back to her desk and returned to work. MethosMuse reached into her briefcase and pulled out the binder that had all her Highlander fanfiction in it and returned to his place on the windowsill to settle down to read her stories.
About forty-five minutes later, he looked up at her. "When did Duncan tell you this?" he asked her.
Ekat looked up from her work. "Tell me what?"
"This," he said pointing to the notebook. Ekat saw that he was referring to the story "Answer to an Old Man's Rambling". She smiled at his confused expression. "I don't remember him telling you how he felt about Quickenings."
"Oh that," she said as she bent back over her report. "The day after you dictated 'To Ride the Lightning.' He said that I needed both sides of the coin to fully understand the experience."
"Where was I when he came by?"
"Um…" she looked up and bit her lower lip as she tried to remember where her Muse had gone that night. "I honestly don't know where you were."
MethosMuse shook his head. "It's certainly an interesting take on the event." Ekat shrugged. Who was she to say what was the correct way a Quickening felt? It wasn't like she was an Immortal and had first hand experience.
Ten minutes later, Ekat finished the report she was working on and returned the notebook to the top of the filing cabinet. She then clicked onto the internet browser on her computer and logged into Fanfiction.net. She clicked on the books section and went searching for the Harry Potter folder.
"What are you doing?" MethosMuse asked her looking up from his reading.
"What does it look like I'm doing," she asked back sarcastically.
"Like you're surfing the Internet. I thought you said you had work to do."
"I finished. Gwen told me she finally posted Chapter 9 of 'His Majesty's Secret Service' and I want to go read it."
"You have chapter three to write of a Highlander fic and here you are reading a Harry Potter story instead," he protested.
"Figured that out all by yourself did you? I told Gwen at lunch that I would read her new chapter and let her know what I thought of it. I am not inspired at the moment to write any HL stuff and I still have an hour before I can go home." MethosMuse mumbled something under his breath. "What was that?"
"I didn't say a thing. I'm just sitting here reading, like a good little Muse."
"Uh-huh," Ekat commented as she began reading the on-line fanfiction. She had just finished reading when the IM screen blinking on.
KATIE: I'm baaaaaccckkkk
EKAT: Hi there. Hey, the Muse here is getting annoyed that I'm not working on Secrets. I thought I would retaliate and write a story about his exploits today. Want to write it together? I write my parts, send it to you and you write your parts?
KATIE: Sure, I have time.
EKAT: cool. I'll start work on it now and zap it to you. Um… what's your addy… I have it in my address book at home but I'm at work now.
Katie sent her address to her. Ekat grinned. She knew she couldn't go for two months not writing about her favorite Muse, but writing embarrassing stories about him and posting them was a much better form of punishment in her book.
She felt her chair shift as MethosMuse leaned on the back of it to read over her shoulder.
"You wouldn't dare!" he exclaimed. Instead of responding to him, she opened up the word processing program and began to type.
**************
It Takes Two
Authors: Ekat and Katie Grogan
Rating: G
Disclaimers: he made us do it.
Summary: How many writers does it take to keep a Muse occupied?
****************
MethosMuse cried out in anguish. "I can't believe you are doing this to me. What did I ever do to you? I've been a very good Muse."
"You pester my beta-readers and me mercilessly and don't know how to take 'no' for an answer," she said as she began to write of her morning.
"That's it! I'm leaving. I won't be unemployed for long. Maybe AC needs a new Muse."
"AC already has her own MethosMuse AND a RichieMuse. Ya know, I used to pity her having to deal with two Muses. Now I envy her. At least two can keep each other occupied. Lucky me got stuck with just the Really Old Guy who wants to constantly monopolize my time."
"This is not fair!"
"Life's not fair, deal with it. Hey, how do you spell professional? Does it have one s or two?"
MethosMuse moaned and crumpled to the ground. Ekat smiled in triumph and returned to her newly inspired story.
*End*