The concept of the Highlander universe and the character of Duncan MacLeod were created by someone else. They belong to someone else. Actually, they belong to a bunch of people - Gregory Widen, Peter Davis, William Panzer, the folks at Gaumont, and those at Rysher Entertainment, as well. They do not belong to me, and I'm borrowing them without permission. Because Highlander-The Series is my favorite TV show, and because this story has been written out of love with no hope of monetary gain - I hope they'll forgive the transgression.


Move over Mary Sue - Chapter 5

I awake slowly, drifting up through soft gossamer layers of sleep. Sunlight presses against my eyelids. It teases me to open them, but this is such a warm comforting place, and the light is an intruder. I don't want to let it in.

Slowly realization dawns and like the sun, it disturbs my tranquillity, but unlike the sun I welcome it. My senses tell me I'm in a strange place, yet one that is becoming familiar. In a flash of cognizance, I know where I am. I'm in Duncan's bed - where I've woken up several times over the last few weeks. I'm in Duncan's arms with the warm male scent of him wrapped around me.

We've come to this place, he and I. Moved beyond our boundaries. Past the point of turning back. No matter what happens, I can no longer dismiss him lightly. I can no longer erase him from my memories. And yet, I still know nothing about him.

In waking moments, when I'm at work or far away from his still-dazzling physical presence, I question my sanity, or at the very least my intelligence. I wonder whatever possessed me to slip so easily into an intimate relationship with a man I know nothing about. Nothing save that - above all else - he is intelligent, kind, often funny and the most interesting man, I've ever met.

Conscious of the dangers, I'm drawn to him like a river is drawn by gravity over a precipice. Each day I drift ever closer to inevitable disaster. Whatever his secret is, I know, that someday it will send me plummeting over a cliff. Someday it will shatter my illusions. Someday it will flow between us not merely a placid stream, but a roaring cataract, and if I wish to cross it - if I wish return to his side - I will have to risk being dashed on the rocks. Someday, I will have to deal with it or walk away. But now, I doubt if I can ever walk away without leaving a piece of myself behind. Now, I wonder if I can walk away at all.

Behind me he stirs. His chest is a bolster at my back, his arm - the weight around my waist, his hand - the warmth cradling my breast, his breath - a gentle caress on my neck. I rest my arm along the length of his arm, and interlace my fingers with his. I smile because I'm content. And I smile because, I've found a comforting flaw in his perfect veneer - he snores.

Not a loud window-rattling snore. I had an uncle who snored like that. No matter how many rooms away your bed was from his, it could keep you awake if you didn't fall asleep before he retired for the night.

Not even the raucous chatter of a chain saw. No this was closer to the sound of autumn leaves being rustled by a hefty breeze or the drone of a bumble bee searching for pollen on a hot summer day. While it can be annoying if you're trying to sleep, a snore can be such an intimate sound when it comes from a man whose mouth is mere inches from your ear.

In six months, I've come to know much - but not nearly enough - about this man who snores behind me. I've met some of his friends, and they're an odd lot - not the sort of friends I envisioned him having when we first met.

Though he is at least ten or fifteen years older, Joe Dawson is perhaps the closest fit. He and Duncan laugh often when we're all together, and there's a warm camaraderie between them - two men from different origins who've found a common ground. Of course, since I don't ask pointed questions, I haven't learned the origins of either one, but I sense they've come together along vastly different paths.

And then there's Connor - who I gathered is some sort of distant cousin. He passed through Seacouver on his way back to New York a few weeks ago. He seemed nice enough, and he was an intelligent man with a wry twist to his humor. I liked him, yet there was something odd about him as well. There were looks that passed between them - him and Duncan. Looks that spoke thick tomes if you only knew the language ... which, of course, I didn't.

Richie and Adam are the two who don't quite fit the group shot I have in mind when I think of Duncan with his friends. Richie can't be more than twenty, and though he seems a street-wise kid, there is an air of innocence about him. He holds it in and covers it well, but it flows deep beneath his tough-guy surface. In a quiet moment, when Duncan was busy talking to Joe, I worked up the nerve to ask Richie how he and Duncan met.

He smiled, then he told me that he had been living on the streets and that he had broken into an antique shop Duncan had a few years back. He explained that instead of pressing charges, Duncan and the woman he was living with, took him in. That explained the hints of the father-son relationship, I had noticed between them. The Richie Ryan Reclamation project, he called it, laughing easily. Then his expression slipped from boyish smile to serious adult, and he told me about Tessa.

On one of the shelves in the loft, Duncan has a picture of him with his arm wrapped around a pretty blond woman. They are both smiling and they look very much in love ... with each other.

When I first noticed it, I walked over for a closer look. I sensed him move to stand behind me, then he reached around and picked up the picture. I was reluctant to turn around, afraid to see what emotions I might find swirling in his dark eyes. Afraid to find out who the woman might be.

"Who is she?" I asked. The words were out before I had a chance to realize that I didn't want to know.

"Was," he said in a quiet voice - a whisper that told me more than I wanted to hear. "She's dead." All emotion gone then, locked away in safe place.

I turned around, slowly, compelled to face what I feared, but he had turned away. He crossed the room and put the picture in a drawer. To hide it from my prying eyes, or to hide it from himself? I couldn't be sure.

He stood for a moment with his back to me, then I moved to stand behind him. I wrapped my arms around his waist and rested my cheek against his back. His heart thumped faintly against my ear. "You loved her," I said. Half question ... half statement, because I already knew the answer.

"Yes," he said. Barely a whisper driven by a deep exhalation.

He pushed the drawer shut, then he turned in my embrace. Draping an arm across my shoulders, he smiled. "Want some coffee?" he asked. The only trace of deep emotion left were the tiny wells of moisture in the corners of his eyes.

The next time I visited his loft, a jade Buddha sat in the picture's place, and it filled me with a sorrow I didn't quite understand. If we move into a serious relationship, I will ask him to put the picture back. If he loved her as much as I suspect, he can't expunge her from his life. Even if it were possible, I wouldn't want him to.

Light danced in Richie's blue eyes as he spoke about Tessa, and I knew that she must have been a special lady. I can't deny Duncan that, nor do I fear her ghost. Some deep instinct tells me that, above all else, she would want him to be happy. It is a bond I share with this woman who loved Duncan, and then died - I want him to be happy, as well.

As my thoughts of Tessa fade, Adam surfaces in my mind and the word enigmatic swiftly follows the vision of his twinkling, yet crafty, eyes and thin face. My senses tell me he is the oddest of Duncan's hodge-podge collection of friends. Adam Pierson is not who he seems - of that I am certain.

"A perpetual grad student," Joe had said in a teasing tone, and Adam didn't deny the jibe.

In jeans, sneakers and a grey sweatshirt, with dark, short-cropped hair and his fingers constantly wrapped around a beer bottle, Adam fits the image, all right, but the mystery that clings like a silver mist to Duncan, clings to Adam as well.

His dry wit, and raging cynicism sit well and seem an intrinsic part of him, but the grad student facade does not, and I wonder what lies beneath it. Dara would like Adam Pierson and I contemplated playing the match game, but I realize I will not be doing her any favors by dragging her into this tangle of intrigue with me.

If you asked me to guess, I'd probably say that Adam is in his late twenties - or barely over the line into his third decade, yet there is an aura of age and experience beyond that number of years that shimmers around him.

He is a man who knows things. He is a man with secrets locked deep in his soul. And he is a man who has forgotten the meaning of innocence ... forgotten it long ago. I watch his eyes, and Duncan's when they meet by chance or intent, and I can feel the tingle of what passes between them. They have a common bond of some sort that goes beyond friendship, these two men, and I wonder what it could be.

The others - Joe, Richie and Connor - they know what Duncan hides from the world. I can hear it when they talk. I can see it in their eyes. They are on that side of a glass wall; I am on this side. He trusts them with his soul - he doesn't yet trust me. But I'm working on it.

He is awake now, moving dewy soft lips in a trail of kisses across my shoulder, but I pretend I'm asleep so I can see what creative persuasion he will use to wake me. The palm of his hand feels slightly rough like fine textured emery as he slides it along my side and down my thigh. Before his hand even reaches its destination, I squirm with anticipation and the sudden flare of desire pulses hot and cold at the same time. I'm awake and every cell in my body is alive with wanting him. I can no longer pretend. The deep soft chuckle that brushes my ear tells me he is aware of his triumph and quite pleased with the result.

I turn to face him, then sink my teeth into his lower lip in retaliation. It doesn't faze him. Nothing does. He is never surprised, yet he surprises me at every turn. I've had my fair share of lovers, but never have I met a man who can lift the ordinary act of making love to such a level that it becomes an art form. I ask him in a breathless whisper how he learned to be such a master.

"Same way you get to Carnegie Hall," he mumbles, his lips pressed against my skin. "Practice, practice, practice."

I pinch him for telling bad jokes in bed. He laughs and the sultry sound of it sends shivers along my fevered flesh. "You'll pay for that," I tell him.

"Promises, promises," he mutters, then he proceeds to erase all thoughts of revenge from my mind.