FIC: Upon A Pale Horse (Methos/Rhys) crossover
Title: Upon A Pale Horse
Rating: R
Pairing: Methos/Rhys (Highlander/Hamilton's Merry Gentry Series)
Timeline: Post Caress of Twilight, pre Seduced by Moonlight.
Methos was in the bar, ensconced on his normal barstool and working his way through what was probably his third beer of the night when Duncan arrived. The lights were low, but the TV blazed silently from above the bar. The world's oldest Immortal was eating beer nuts from a bowl in front of him and reading a glossy brochure for an Alaskan Cruise line. One heel was nocked in the bottom rung of his barstool.
"Cruises?" Mac asked casually, throwing his coat on the bar next to him before sitting down and snatching the brochure from Methos's hands. "I thought you didn't like boats."
Methos grabbed the brochure back. "A cruise ship is hardly what I would call a boat. It's more like a moving city." He took a sip of his beer and shook the brochure. "Shopping, casinos, restaurants, swimming pools, movie theatres, everything you could want."
"Bars?" Duncan teased, nodding to Joe as he set the beer in front of him.
Methos drained his glass. "Open twenty-four hours a day."
Joe took the glass from him. "Thank god for international waters."
Methos just shrugged. Duncan laughed and pulled the invitation from his back pocket and slapped it on the bar. "Well, I hope you're not planning to go in the near future, because I," he opened the invitation and slid it in front of Methos, "have an invitation to stay at Sherilyn Firoque's this weekend in Santa Barbara."
Joe stopped in the middle of pouring a black and tan. "Sherilyn Firoque? The designer? How the hell did you get an invite like that?"
Duncan smirked. "I knew her when she was Cheryl Firkenmeyer, sometime housefrau and aspiring dressmaker." He fanned himself with the invitation before Methos snatched it out of his hands and peered at the gold embossing. "She just needed a little start up cash and a few connections."
Joe laughed, shaking his head as he set two filled mugs on a wait tray for his server. "Do you know everyone, Mac?" He ran a hand through his hair and leaned against the bar, taking a sip from his glass.
"Oh yes," Methos answered for him. "Didn't you know? Duncan single handedly fostered the Impressionist movement, the Boxer Rebellion, and the use of polyester in American fashion." He managed to duck when Duncan reached out to cuff his ears. "Oh, too slow."
"So," Duncan drawled, resting his head on Methos's shoulder. "Are you up for it? A weekend of sun, surf and horribly elitist intellectualism?" He batted his eyelashes. "You can lie around in a swimsuit and display ridiculous amounts of disdain for the masses."
Methos shrugged him off. "Oh hell no." He sipped from his beer. "In fact, I don't even think I own a swimsuit."
"I'll buy you one."
"I can't even recall one line of Mencken. What kind of misanthrope could I possibly be? Besides, no one who really hates their fellow man that much ever goes to a place to hang out with a bunch of them."
Duncan tossed the invite back on the bar and shook his head. "Sure they do. You were a member of the Algonquin Table, weren't you?"
Methos made a hand puppet with his fingers. "On the fringes, and that was just for the free booze. Besides, schweetheart, I don't want to belong to a club that would have me for a member, see?"
Duncan rolled his eyes. Methos was all jokes, but underneath he wasn't budging. Duncan had hoped that he'd be able to actually do something for Methos, get him out of the drizzly city for a while. It wasn't that he'd been working too hard, because God knew Methos made sure he never worked hard, but the rain seemed to depress him, for all that he told Duncan "when I was your age, there were unicorns and dragons, and the world was an earthly paradise. Then it rained for forty days and nights."
The fact remained that the last time he'd seen Methos laugh had been three weeks ago. And that was real laughter, not that fake stuff that the body bubbled up as an automatic response to things that were supposed to be humorous. Duncan knew full well where real laughter came from, what it felt like, and more importantly, when it was coming from Methos.
"Oh, there's my girl," Joe said, reaching for the volume control on the television. "Pa pa pa pow."
Methos snorted. "Joe is in deep smit with a sidhe princess." He blinked and looked at the full beer glass that had materialized in front of him. "Joe, thirty seconds in that girl's bed would kill you."
Duncan watched Joe grin and pour himself a shot of sour mash. "Yeah, but what a way to go."
"Princess Meredith NicEssus, the long lost royal of the American Unseelie Court, was spotted last week at Labrys, a popular night club outside of the Holmby Hills area. The Princess was escorted by several of her prospective husbands, also members of the Unseelie court from St Louis."
Methos glanced at the screen and cocked his head. "That's a fine looking woman," he said offhandedly. Duncan stared at the screen, watching the young woman with moonlit skin and tricolored green eyes try to move through the barrage of reporters. Her garnet hair formed a veil that hid her face, and she was shielded from the camera view by a tall man who looked to be made of onyx. They fought their way through the press and into a waiting car. The man helped the princess in before entering the back seat himself. A few other men got into the vehicle, but none of them were as surprisingly visual as the black man; one was white, as if his body was made of alabaster and silver, and another had an eyepatch and a fall of white curly hair. This last one waved to the cameras before getting in the passenger seat and motioning for the driver to move.
Methos set down his beer glass. "Joe, get me the TiVO remote."
Joe handed over the remote warily. "As long as I get it back, buddy." But Methos wasn't listening. He pressed the rewind button and watched the people get out of the car before playing it again. Duncan noticed the other man's face become hard and unreadable as he scanned the bodies and faces of the sidhe on the screen.
"Have a thing for the sidhe?" he asked cheekily.
Methos paused the image on the man with the eyepatch. "Don't knock sex with the fey, MacLeod," he said stonily, eyes staring at the image on the screen. A customer at a table behind them complained loudly about the interruption of the news broadcast. Joe took the remote from Methos's lax hand.
"Okay buddy, freeze frame time is over." He unpaused the picture and they all watched the sidhe and their car drive away in a lightning of flashbulbs.
Methos seemed to revert back to normal instantly, resuming his beer consumption with the automatic ease of one with centuries of experience at hiding inner thoughts. His fingers relaxed against the shiny bar top, his shoulders slumped slightly, and he placed the balls of his feet back on the lower rung of the stool. It was a very tricky and rather convincing act. Finally, he glanced at Duncan without really making eye contact.
"You know," he said jovially, "I think I'll go with you after all."
Duncan didn't buy it for a minute. "What about the club that would have you for a member?"
Methos chugged the last of his beer and smiled. It was almost sweet, which meant that it wasn't good. "I've tried honey, but the AARP demand to see my social security card first."
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Merry was stretching on her deck chair out by the pool, and it was enough to make any man's throat go dry. The sun danced down her skin as the clouds rolled by, and her bathing suit strained in all the right places.
Rhys swallowed and took another pull from the bottled water in his hand. He was supposed to be folding laundry, one of the only acceptable household tasks that the Guards performed on a day to day basis, but he was taking a break. Plus, the only thing left to fold was Merry's underwear, and that was a trial to even touch, especially since she wasn't in them at the time.
Most of the time Rhys tried not to think about the more complex things. He might joke that his biggest problems right now were sharing a room with Frost and Nicca, or maybe learning how to set the clock on the VCR, but in reality, Rhys had been thinking of many many worse things lately, ever since the Nameless had been loosed and then rebound outside the guesthouse in which they were all living.
Merry might have thought that the worst thing he'd been pondering would be his maiming at the hand of goblins, and yes, that was a major issue, especially since they were due to start re-negotiating the terms of Merry's alliance -their alliance-- with Kurag and the goblins. In fact, there wasn't a time when he ever stepped out of the shower and stared at that scarred over socket and didn't think of Siun's arms around him.
He'd get that bitch, but that was just a matter of biding his time.
In reality, Rhys was more preoccupied with reconnecting to the darkness expanding inside him like so many unwinding spools of thread. The Nameless, the First Casting also, had taken a great deal of his abilities, but it had also taken all the lusts that relied on those powers and quashed them into a compact ball that he could tuck in the back of his head. Now that the Nameless had returned things, powers and abilities had slipped back inside him with the stealthy familiarity of a drunken teenager sneaking back into his bedroom after curfew. That hidden knot of emotion, of desires and wants, some of them needs even, were creeping forward into his conscious thought more and more.
He didn't tell anyone, not even Doyle. Especially not Doyle, because if he had, Darkness might insist that he be sent back the Queen. And that wasn't acceptable.
It would be so much easier if this was happening and he was free to indulge some of his darker inclinations, but this wasn't his century, his domain, nor even his freedom to choose what or whom he wanted to do. Instead, he was stuck sharing a woman with four other men, five if Rhys counted Kitto, which he didn't.
Not that he didn't like, correct that, love fucking Merry. It was all the other people he wasn't allowed to fuck who detracted from his enjoyment in the odd moments when he wasn't panting after hot sidhe flesh. Rhys had never been one to refuse the ladies, and now he had to more actively than ever. It had been easier before when he was never far from the court, and one look at Queen Andais had always been enough to ground him in the reality of what would happen to him if he disobeyed. But Merry was almost too accommodating, too lenient, and more and more he forgot the penalty he would pay if he couldn't keep it in his pants.
There were other things his body wanted besides straight sex, and he was getting quite enough straight sex anyway.
He couldn't think about it. He didn't want to think about it. He didn't want to see half of the things he saw now, not because they disturbed him, but because he knew he wasn't supposed to be seeing them. He had given all of this away with the Nameless, and it was supposed to be beyond his reach. It was all supposed to be gone, powers that he shouldn't access because he was no longer Lord of the Dead, no longer a ruler in Hell, but a servant in…
Milton wasn't the best comparison he could make, anyway.
Rhys piled Merry's underwear on top of all of the folded clothes in the basket and carried it down the hall into her bedroom. Last night had been Doyle's night, and the room still had the scent of sex and other things that dripped with the sense of other. Tonight was Frost's night, and the following would be Galen's. Rhys opened the top bureau drawer and began to stack folded blouses and shirts into it.
He could hear splashing outside and the sound of laughing. Merry and Galen being silly, probably. For once, the prospect of being in the sunlight, of sliding through the cool water of the swimming pool, to have her smile at him, wasn't something he wanted.
Rhys threw on a pair of faded jeans and a shirt that might not have even been his, for the tightness of it across his arms, and reached for a pair of shoes. It occurred to him to take a weapon at the last minute and his hand automatically chose Uamhas, an instinct he didn't want to take the time to dissect. He tucked the sword in its trenchcoat sheath, palmed the keys from the hook next to the kitchen door and brushed past Frost on his way out.
"Where are you going?" Frost asked from the hallway. The tone in his voice meant that he expected an answer from Rhys, who didn't plan on giving him one. Well, at least not a good one.
"Out."
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Methos sighed and rolled over on the inflatable raft he had made his home a few hours earlier. He had exhausted himself with the caviar and the champagne, and the beer on tap was some bizarre cranberry concoction that didn't deserve the name of any alcoholic beverage, let alone ale. Duncan had bought him a swimsuit, for which he was grateful, because he could paddle his little island out into the middle of the pool and pretend that he was by himself, if he closed his eyes and blocked out the incessant strains of conversation and smooth jazz that assaulted him from all sides.
On the other hand, he was merely biding his time until he could slip out and steal the rental. He had actual plans and that didn't involve discussing the latent homosexual overtones in the work of Steven Spielberg. Duncan was in his element, mixing it up with the ladies and talking football with some of the more macho men, but Methos wasn't interested in either.
In fact, he decided looking at the streaks of early sunset in the sky, now would be a good time to bow out for the evening. He rolled off the raft into the water and swam to the edge of the pool, pulling himself up and into a standing position so noiselessly he hoped everyone still thought he was out in the middle of Sherilyn's expansive Olympic sized pool.
He had made it to their lush guestroom and had almost finished dressing when Duncan finally found him.
"I knew it," he said, leaning in the doorway, one hand on the jamb. "You do have ulterior motives for being here."
Methos finished tucking his sword into his trenchcoat and sighed. "Maybe I'm just tired of pruning myself in a vat of chlorine." He slipped his knives into the hilts lined in the outer sides of his boots and rolled the cuffs of his jeans down. Duncan's eyes were unreadable when he glanced at him, so he decided to go ahead and load the gun anyway.
"No, I knew it when you brought the gun. After all that fuss you had to go through to declare it, I knew you'd only bring it unless you were sure you'd wear it."
Methos snorted. "The TSA are right bitches, aren't they?" A female voice called Duncan's name, and they both looked in the direction of its origin. "You have made quite a splash with the ladies, haven't you? Shoshanna Lonstein doesn't want to leave you alone for one minute."
Duncan grinned that soft leer of 'I'm so gonna get laid' without seeming offensive a face that Methos never had been able to pull off. Maybe it had something to do with his nose. In any case, Methos was sure that Duncan could find other things to do with this room, now that he was vacating it, at least temporarily. He slipped his hands into Duncan's coat hanging over the back of the desk chair and found the car keys.
"At least tell me where you're going, then," Duncan said, sipping from the champagne flute in his hand, his eyes bemused. If Methos didn't know any better he might have thought Duncan was going to try to stop him. But he didn't try to stop him as he walked by, didn't grab his arm, didn't block his way.
"Can't," he called over his shoulder.
"Why not?"
Methos shrugged. "Because I'm not sure."
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Wandering aimlessly had lost its shine about an hour previous, but to be truthful, Rhys was still in the process of retracing his steps back to where he must have parked the car. It was a tad embarrassing, not being able to remember, but every part of this city looked like the other. Besides, his parking meter must have run out of quarters hours ago, so the cops were probably towing the car by now. Rhys shrugged his shoulders in his coat, shifted his sword a little in its sheath, and looked for the spinning yellow lights of a tow truck.
He'd been out for hours, much longer than he'd expected, but there had been a double feature at the Cineplex, and this time it hadn't been an Ingmar Bergman marathon. Nope, Nora Prentiss followed by Double Indemnity. He'd eaten a whole box of Sno-Caps against his better judgement, so when the films had ended it had been dark outside and he was sugar wired. Rhys had decided to walk as far as he could, and then just walk back. It had sounded like a good idea at the time.
The area was getting less and less upscale, more and more seedy; Rhys wasn't concerned for his safety. If he had thought deeper about it, he might have admitted that he was looking for a fight, for a reason to use the sword tucked into his coat.
The streets were deserted in the warehouse district. Rhys was fairly sure that his car wasn't here, but that wasn't the foremost thing on his mind. In fact not much of anything was really on his mind except for a feeling that he needed to walk further. His hands shoved in his pockets and whistling a tune from some commercial, Rhys contented himself by putting one foot in front of the other.
There was a flash of lightning three blocks down and a loud cracking noise, not so much like thunder as like something exploding. Rhys stopped whistling, but he kept on walking, one of his hands leaving its pocket and moving to the inside of his coat. The lightning flashed again, though it wasn't coming from the sky. Either there was some sort of fey battle going on, or Big Trouble in Little China had been more a documentary than the action comedy he'd taken it as.
"It's all in the reflexes," he said as he unsheathed Uamhas and swung her around in an arc. He was curious, and had no intention getting involved, but it couldn't hurt to be prepared. Every time he wasn't prepared he ended up losing a quart of blood or so.
The lightning danced out from the inside of an alleyway, the tips of it licking the corners and the curb. There might have been someone screaming, but it was hard to make out over the car alarms going off and the exploding streetlights. Luckily there was a full moon. Rhys stopped short a block and watched for a few more seconds as the lightning seemed to become less active and its reach lessened. No matter what he might think about the feel of electricity in his body, this was neither the time nor the place, not to mention that a few jolts of electricity were a lot different from 1.21 gigawatts.
Once it seemed that the lightning had ceased, it seemed safe enough to investigate. If it were fey, then he'd want to see what was going on, even if it was just to report back to Doyle. And if it were some Asian storm god, then well, wouldn't that just be peachy? Maybe it would be some Asian goddess, and this could get really fun.
He peeked around the corner in search of live bodies, preferably curvy ones. No such luck.
A man in a trenchcoat knelt in the middle of the alleyway, both hands flat out in front of him. It occurred to Rhys that there was one option he hadn't thought of; not surprising, since he hadn't seen this special effect in particular since the death of the historical Jesus. Immortals and the sidhe rarely crossed paths, mostly because the sidhe were wrapped up in their own diplomacies. Immortals weren't magic, not in the way that relied on faerie. Rhys had had the pleasure of meeting several over the course of his lifetime. Their magic was innate and uncontrollable, and it only served themselves.
Rhys readied his sword, studying the man on the ground. He was panting, gasping really, which was only logical considering that he'd just had enough electricity pumped through to him send him back in time if he'd only been going eighty eight miles and hour. He couldn't see much of him with his head down, except that he was lanky, with black hair. He still had a sword within reach of one hand, which meant that he was still dangerous.
"You alright there, buddy?" he said jovially from the entrance to the alleyway. The man's head shot up in alarm and his hand found the hilt of his sword. His whole body jerked to life as if the weapon held a revitalizer of some sort. He left his knees and rolled up onto his feet, standing very unsteadily. His shoulders bowed inward for a moment, his head still ducked down so that Rhys couldn't see his face.
Rhys readjusted his hold on his sword. Behind him, car alarms shrilled and beeped. "I said, are you-"
The man lifted his head, and for the first time Rhys got a glimpse of his face, long sharp features, almost familiar, eyes completely clear, not muddled with confusion or pain. In fact, there was something recognizable in the glint in his eye. He readied his blade out in front of him and cocked his head to one side. Rhys didn't like the look of that.
"Well well well, Cromm Cruach," the man drawled, his sword still out and unmoving, so still the light that reflected from its blade didn't waver for a moment.
Rhys smiled. "That isn't my name anymore." He shifted his weight to better move when the man moved. He needed the upper hand in this fight. "They call me Rhys now."
"What a shame," the man told him before lunging forward and bringing up sword in an underhanded swing that seemed an arc of liquid metal. Rhys countered it and for one second his heart beat with nothing but the anticipation that potential bloodlust could bring. When their blades kissed, Rhys moved in with his whole body, putting all of his weight behind the sword.
"Something tells me they don't call you Death anymore, either," he said to Methos, giving up on animosity and settling on grinning like a fool.
Methos's face reflected his own amusement, and he slid his blade down Rhys's as he lowered it. The gesture was unnecessary, but the sound of metal on metal cut through Rhys's lower abdomen in ways that he didn't want to think about.
"No, they don't," Methos said. "They call me Mr. Tibbs."
Rhys disengaged and lowered his weapon. "I see you're still an asshat."
"And you still get turned on by swordplay."
Rhys didn't flush, though if he had been anyone else he might have. "I guess so," he mumbled in his best 'gosh darn it' voice. "Don’t you?"
Methos lowered his sword and held out his hand to take Rhys's. "Not as much as I used to, but sometimes, when the magic's right." He clasped Rhys's hand at the forearm and pulled the sidhe in for a tight embrace. "It's been a while, my friend."
Rhys closed his eyes for a second and lowered his head to Methos's shoulder. "I thought you'd be long dead."
He could feel Methos cough out a laugh. "As often as I hear that, you'd think I'd have a ready response." He blinked. "And as many times as I've said that, I think it is my ready response." Rhys could feel him loosening the hold, pulling away, letting go. For a split second it felt like the severing of a limb. "Let's go get a drink."
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"So Andais just let you go?" Methos sipped at his bourbon and reclined in his chair even more without letting his coat fall open and expose his sword. Rhys's sword was short enough that he could comfortably slouch in his trenchcoat without it being seen. Plus it didn't matter if anyone saw him with it; Americans gave the sidhe a lot of slack, even the cops.
Rhys lifted his glass to his lips, but the sip he took was minimal. "The Queen has lifted the geas for Princess Meredith and Princess Meredith only." He looked uncomfortable talking about it. His eyes shifted to the door, as if any minute he expected a threat to walk through it. Maybe one would.
This was one of the seedier bars in the area, and they had picked it for that purpose. The bartender looked as if he'd never seen a sidhe before, which might have very well been the truth. He'd given them a bottle of his best bourbon, something his patrons normally couldn't afford; Methos could tell by the dust on the bottle. The two of them had taken seats in the back facing the door. Old habits died hard.
"That kind of bites," Methos muttered into his glass. He meant it, but one look at Rhys convinced him that the man was torn on what to say.
It was nighttime, and that meant anything he said would be carried back to the Queen of Air and Darkness. So instead, he shrugged and shrouded his face with his hair before saying, "Oh, it's not so bad. It's the sharing that's a bitch."
Methos reached over and refilled his glass from the bottle. "I don't recall you ever having to share before."
Rhys made a sour face, and the cheap red lights from the neon Budweiser sign in the window painted his moonlight skin and hair in a familiar red, though more garish and tacky than he had ever looked millennia ago. He leaned back on two chair legs and draped one hand on the back of his chair.
"I know, I know, that was more your thing, wasn't it? How are your brothers, anyway?"
Methos closed his eyes. With any other man, he might have said something sharp, searing, funny. Instead he opened them and communicated everything in his face, something he hadn't done since The Americas were new born. The juke box in the corner started something slow and hard, The Blue Oyster Cult or some such dark riveting song that reminded Methos of the slow circular grinding that can be done between two people fully clothed, a precursor to things sticky and possibly bloody.
Rhys sitting across from him called up thoughts he didn't really want to ponder. He didn't really even know why he had come here. Had he wanted to dredge up memories from the past that they had shared? Was that really something that either of them needed to relive?
Rhys, not Cromm Cruach, sat across from him. Rhys was someone he didn't even know, someone less than he had been, with his missing eye a more then physical reminder of that. Methos wasn't missing any body parts, but he knew that he was well versed in his own diminishment.
He had read a book about old gods sitting in American bars, morning their loss of followers and waxing poetic on the old days. Byron flashed into his mind's eye. Poets and old gods, thunder and rains of lighting. It was all bullshit, and they were fools for even thinking to recapture it.
"Just as well," Rhys muttered, "that Caspian was one crazy fuck."
"I never worried about Caspian," Methos said offhandedly. "You know to never worry about those people."
For a second there was another matchflare of understanding, bright, scintillating, something that would have been perfumed with a pleasant acrid smell if it could have been an odor. Rhys's one eye flared to life, all three shades of blue becoming whorls of something deeper. Methos had never been able to resist the eyes of the sidhe. It was one of the reasons he kept as far from them as possible.
Rhys drained his glass, but he didn't reach for a refill. "What brings you to L.A.?"
Methos blinked a few times before answering. He couldn't very well say that he'd seen Rhys on the evening news. That would sound sentimental and full of indications he didn't really feel. Anything less than the truth though, would be an insult.
"An old friend is attending some soiree in Santa Barbara, and I came for the sun." That was the truth, at least the real truth he'd told everyone else. Methos was of the belief that the truth was what you made it.
"And the little head rolling adventure you had in that alley way?"
Methos sighed and shook his head. Perhaps he should have another. "That was a complete accident. The headhunters seem to follow my traveling companion around." He reached for the bottle and missed. Three glasses of bourbon on an empty stomach was a bad idea. "I suppose it's only natural that they start to rub off on me."
Rhys snorted and let his chair tilt a little more precariously than before. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say that you're not so happy about having to wield that pig sticker you have." He reached over his chest to the table and snagged his glass. Three young women at the bar eyed them and giggled; that was the last thing Methos needed: a gaggle of girls intent on picking either of them up.
"You seemed to be ready to use yours," he offered, glancing away from their audience before he accidentally made eye contact. "Have the police given you special clearance to be carrying that thing around?"
Rhys made wide eyes. "Sword, officer? What sword?"
Methos resented the sidhe for many things. Glamour was one of the many. "You so suck, he mumbled into his glass as he looked away and out the door. "A very great deal."
Rhys waved a hand. "Actually, our swords were always accepted, and then they were grandfathered in at the Treaty of Sidhe cohabitance in 1865." He ran a hand through his hair and adjusted his eyepatch. Methos wondered what it felt like to have this lack of depth perception. He'd never irrevocably lost an eye, and the one time he'd lost his eyesight, he'd just killed himself repeatedly until he'd woken up hale and whole. It meant that Rhys couldn't use a gun very well, but Methos was betting that his body remembered what using any other bladed weaponry was like enough to compensate for the lack of depth perception.
It would be rude of him to ask about the eye outright; he'd had too much experience with the fey for such an action on his part to be excusable. If Rhys wanted to volunteer this information, then he would. Otherwise Methos would have to sit and wonder what could have taken the eye of the Lord of the Dead.
The jukebox decided on something much more ethnic; "the one Latin song" blared to life from its rusty innards. Methos had a theory that all Latin songs were mathematically the same. He thought to tell this to Rhys as he might have to Duncan or Joe, but Rhys wasn't Mac, and this wasn't the kind of meeting that was for idle chatter. In fact, he didn't know what this was.
Usually when he didn't understand what kind of situation he was in, Methos made sure that he was in it as briefly as possible. Instead, he'd come here, taken a head, which, now that he thought about it, was sitting inside him as poorly as a half cooked pork bun from a disreputable market stall. In fact, whomever he'd had the displeasure of absorbing tonight didn't like liquor much of all, and he wasn't done fighting.
Rhys sighed and half closed his one eye, but Methos knew he was anything but tired. Instead, he was watching the group of girls at the bar, partly for threats, and partly out of interest. None of them were particularly pretty, even though one or two of them was well stacked. If he recalled anything correctly, Rhys liked the…fuller ones. Maybe it was because sidhe women were always small breasted.
"Do you remember Albion?" Methos said suddenly to him, refilling his glass and recalling the past, both against his better judgement. Somehow, he had guessed that this was the way the night was going to go the moment he rewound the TiVO in the bar.
Rhys grinned and let all of his chair legs thud onto the floor, leaning in conspiratorially. "That barmaid with the red dress and the club foot."
Methos poured the remains of the bottle into Rhys's glass. "And the man out of nowhere with the three mules and that, what was that, a bag of potatoes?"
"Yams," Rhys corrected.
They paused for a minute and then said synchronically, "Rebecca, I brung ye y'er dowry, me lass," before collapsing into laughter.
"Ah," Methos sighed, leaning back into the chair still clutching the empty bourbon bottle. He really didn't have anything to add. He didn't have a point to any of this. "Do you miss it?"
Rhys looked at him quickly, too quickly. That was almost too direct to be acceptable, but Methos knew he could get away with it. The eye seemed to swirl in its socket, cornflower blue spinning in a pinwheel, even though Methos knew that it was just the light.
He opened his mouth to tell Rhys that it was all right, that he didn't have to answer, that he was sorry that he had asked, but their gaggle of groupie from the bar had finally had enough shots to work up the nerve to saunter over. Rhys chair legs left the ground and his hand strayed over his stomach to the coat that hung from the back of his chair. His hair tumbled in his eyes, but Methos knew he could see everything around them perfectly. He knew because he himself was fully aware of it all as well.
Death never forgot some things.
The one in front, a tall, robust woman with too high hair and too little shirt, jutted one hip out to the side and rested her hand on it. Massive cleavage strained and for a moment, Methos saw a barmaid in a red dress.
"Hello, ladies," he said, draining his glass. Rhys shook his head and let his hair fly back from his face. It was probably good that he was wearing the eyepatch; what lay underneath was unsettling.
Rhys smiled and it was like the sun coming out. Methos had forgotten about the glamour capabilities of the fey, but he had also forgotten just how damned gorgeous they were even without it. He'd seen the show before, but for a mere mortal, it must have been devastating. Even without the eye, what was left was stunning.
"What can we do for you?" Rhys said brightly. His "shucks darn" attitude wasn't going to deter these women from thinking he'd be going home with them for a four way tonight. The bartender brought over a bottle, something horribly out of place in a dive like this, Johnnie Walker Blue Label from the looks of it. The room was dim and Methos's vision was less than trust-worthy.
The best way to proceed was simply to unscrew the cap and fill his glass with one of the finest scotch whiskeys in the world. Or something. Rhys finger trailed away from his hilt and over to his glass, which he slid over to Methos with two fingers, his eye not leaving their still standing company.
The leader with the tube top from hell smiled, and he had to admit that she had a great smile. Only dental work or a childhood of whole milk could produce teeth like that. He had half a mind to invite them for a drink, but for the simple fact that they shouldn't hear anything he had to say, and Rhys was not a free man, no matter how he tried to play it.
"You're one of them elves, right?" Rhys's chair legs hit the floor with a thud. Methos stopped in mid pour. Americans couldn't be that faerie stupid, still, could they?
Rhys closed his eyes, and when he opened them, he grinned. His eye no longer glowed, and something in Methos was more than disappointed to see that it was now just an eye, albeit a rather attractive one.
"I'm afraid, ladies, that the term elves is less than accurate, or complementary," Methos said suddenly, not sure why he bothered to interfere, especially since he generally enjoyed watching uncomfortable situations.
"No no, Lana," said girl number two, dubbed that because she was the second one to speak, "they're called fay. Right?" Girl number two looked to Methos for assent, as if Rhys couldn't have better answered her question.
"Yes," Rhys said cheerfully. "Fey as in gay." He winked and drained his glass. "I would ask you ladies to join us, but I'm afraid we're not in any mood for company."
With a bit of satisfaction and a little bit of surprise, Methos watched their faces fall. The conversation had been lulling, loaded down with things that he and Rhys couldn't or didn't want to say to each other. He had thought that Rhys might welcome the distraction, especially since it came in the female form. The first one, Lana, grinned a knowing smile and bent down to whisper something into Rhys's ear, and Methos got more than enough of a glimpse down the front of her blouse, a feat for such a tightly fitting garment. It was all he could do not to roll his eyes.
Rhys chuckled. "I'll think about it, but right now I'm sorry to say I'm not up to that particular task." Lana looked a little disappointed, but Rhys in full charming form, kissed her hand and sent the three girls back to the bar with his best wistful smile.
When they were gone, Methos leaned back on two legs as his companion had done and found that it was much more comfortable than the straight-backed slouch he'd been affecting. "'Fey as in gay'?" he asked with raised eyebrows.
Rhys grinned. "Let's put it on a T-shirt." His hands ran through his hair. "We’ll get you one that says 'I left my head in San Francisco'."
Methos shook his head. So they were back to lame jokes and scotch. How was this different from any other night at any other bar?
"Do you ever want to feel the dead again?" Rhys asked him without looking away from his glass. Well, this was why it was different.
It was a tricky question, and Methos wasn't sure how to answer it. He'd anticipated that they'd come to this, but he hadn't been sure how to answer it then, and he wasn't any surer now. He had never felt the intimacy with the deceased that Rhys had, but then again, he had just been Death, not the Lord of the Dead himself. Methos was more like the DJ and Rhys was the rapper, really, when it came down to it.
Methos wondered where his glass had gone for about ten seconds before realizing that he'd dropped it on the floor. "Huh," he said to the shards at his feet.
Rhys didn't seem to notice. Nor did anyone else in the room, which might have been because Jimi's "Little Wing" was blaring at such an amazing decibel that he was surprised he heard Rhys's voice at all. Instead, the sidhe glanced over at him finally, following Methos's eyes to the broken glass on the floor. "Aaaand you're kicked, old friend."
Methos slapped a fifty on the table and stood, rearranging his coat and trying not to look too obviously like he was rearranging his coat; this meant that of course because he was drunk he was being way to obvious about rearranging his coat because he didn't want people to know that he was drunk. The more he thought about it, this was a no win situation.
"I used to be better than this," he said, and stopped, because what he had meant to say was that he used to have a better drinking tolerance than this.
Rhys slapped him on the back and smiled, but it didn't reach his eye. "We were, you know, we were."
Methos waved to their group of ex-admirers and wondered if they thought he and Rhys were leaving to shag. The very thought was so alien that it would haunt him for the rest of the night.
He wouldn't think about that. Rhys was the poster child for happy heterosexuals.
He clutched at Rhys's shoulder for a second, realizing that he didn't need to stand because he was not only standing already, but walking out the door. Well then, if his body was this far ahead of his brain, he'd better just give control over to it for a while, and hope it didn't decide to do anything embarrassing, like urinate on itself or projectile vomit or make a pass at Rhys.
Shit. Now he *knew* he wouldn't be able to forget that thought. It called all kinds of pictures to his head that he-
Rhys helped him up before he even realized that he'd collided with the door. This night was turning out to be all kinds of humbling.
Rhys negotiated the door for him, which was a blessing. The act of standing had made the drunkenness seem more poignant, more pronounced, but then again, it always did. He capped a hand on Rhys's shoulder again when they were clear of the jukebox and the smell of whiskey and stale beer. The sidhe looked at him through that one blue eye, a center for Methos to concentrate on instead of the man's lips or the hollow of his throat. He didn't mean to keep coming back to the eye, but aside from the fact that it was very blue, it was also tri-colored, something he didn't see much of now days. And there was the fact that there was only one of them in Rhys's head, whereas the last time he'd seen the man there had been two. It was a shift to the perception.
"My friend," he said harshly, "Let's go talk to the dead."
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"Now *this*," Rhys said loudly, spreading his arms wide and doing a little spin. "*This* is a graveyard." He grinned from ear to ear and dropped down to the ground to press his ear to the floor. Methos hung back and sat on the arm of a pew.
They were in the middle of the new Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, built two years ago in the middle of Los Angeles on the site of an older chapel, a mausoleum, and more importantly a burial ground for the Gabrielino-Tongva tribe. The place was rife with dead things. Rhys didn't need to put his ear to the ground to hear anything better; the pulse of the dead beat inside his chest as he walked though the doors, moving through him like a liquid that left an oily residue.
It had actually been very easy to get in, as cameras were fooled by glamour, and Rhys was lucky he was still in any condition to be doing anything remotely magical, since the world was spinning on a broken axis. Methos seemed worse off than he was, but he was doing his best not to show it. They had walked here, or rather staggered here, singing old drinking songs and war chants until Methos had been able to drunkenly start them on "A Gest of Robyn Hode" for about twenty verses before they were forced to make the rest up in Old English.
And so Methos had let them in with some of his tricksy ways, and Rhys kept them hidden from modern surveillance equipment. They were betting that the cameras didn't have sound, or rather, Rhys was hoping, because he'd been screaming for about five minutes, and now he was face down on the floor, trying to breathe the spirits of the dead through a foot of marble.
He hadn't noticed it until a few hours ago, when Methos had smiled serpentine at him and poured the first drink that he had let something dark in him start to expand like a dried out sponge thrown in a pool of water, an ash snake firework that poured out of nothing. Methos was the catalyst for his willingness to spread about and loll in the spirits of the dead, letting them lick at him like so many snake tongues.
Part of him remembered Methos being a catalyst for many things.
"You look kind of," Methos said, not finishing the sentence and instead sliding down the edge of the pew to land on his rump on the floor. Rhys lifted his head a bit so that his view wasn't so sideways.
"Do you think that we're less badass than we used to be?"
Methos took a really long time to respond to that, but in the end, his head flopped towards Rhys and his shoulders shrugged. "You," he began, then stopped. "You are playing bedboy to Princess Meredith, and I, well," he rolled his head back to look at the altar in front of them. "I will never be king."
Rhys smiled and placed his cheek against the cool floor. If he closed his eyes it felt like something else. "It's good to be the king."
Methos barked a laugh. "You can be my king, then," he said, his voice warbly for a second and it took Rhys longer than normal to realize that he wasn't really mishearing Methos, and also that he sounded funny because Rhys was starting to black out. A bit. He never really blacked out. Not really. It was a thing.
Things were starting to crawl out of the corners of the church, things that weren't fully formed. One was made of dark, and another of the shadow that haunted the edges of his bedroom drapes in the early morning. One was the color and texture of seaweed rotting on flotsam, and another that came from under him seemed to smell like the tangy metallic taint of rusty chains.
"Your king," he said to them, trying to focus and pushing up on his hands.
Methos pulled a flask from his pocket, but didn't unscrew it. He pulled his sword from his jacket and laid it between them, cursing. "That's too damn heavy, and pointy. I think I made a hole in my coat." He illustrated the complaint by sticking his hand into his pocket and wiggling two escaped fingers on the other side. "This was Ralph Lauren."
"Ralph, like vomit," Rhys said absently, eyes on the rolling mist of black that was crawling over the pew behind Methos towards him.
Methos rolled his eyes. "Only if you saw his spring collection last year."
Rhys watched something claw its way up the ambo and roil down the marble steps and into the aisle. One wave of void raised an appendage and used the pews to pull itself closer to him. He wasn't sure what he would do when it reached him, but before it did, it surged forward and then dissipated into a gust of iron filings and smacked him in the face.
He coughed.
"What?" Methos said. "Seriously though, don't puke in here. There's limits and, like holy shit." He pulled the sword closer to him, as if he sensed the thing that had been moving closer to him without ever seeing it.
"Did you-" Rhys started, then realized when he looked at Methos that if he had just seen what Rhys had seen, he wouldn't be just sitting on the floor, letting the dark seep around him like so much-
"You should get up," he said to the Immortal suddenly. He didn't like the way that the shadows were collecting around Methos's sword, and he certainly didn't like the droning noise that they made. The guttering candles over in the chancel went out, leaving them with a few dim overhead lamps.
He shoved up to his knees and stared hard at the floor. He wouldn't look up. Voices came from under him, from behind him, growing louder until he could actually make out what they were saying, even if they didn't seem to be actual words. His head began to pound.
"Why did you bring me here?" he said softly. Methos made some sort of whimpering noise, and when he finally raised his head to look at the other man, he found that his vision was blurred, contracted, like through a tube. Methos smiled, weakly and fumbled with his sword. The other hand dug in his coat.
"There's something that we need," Methos said, eyeing the ground. "I think I'm having a flashback, because the ground is soggy."
The marble under Rhys's fingers seemed to ripple, and he wasn't sure whether it was real or what his other sense was telling him: this ground was replete with the souls of the dead, the pressure of his fingers, the power rising from his fingers enough to cause them to flow to the surface of the rock.
Something seemed to carve a piece out of his chest, like the scraping of a woodcutting.
"I need," he said, making it a statement. Methos cocked his head at him and raised an eyebrow. "I do."
"Huh," Methos replied finally, lowering the gun and bringing it around. "Don't we all."
And he shot himself in the chest. The gun thudded to the ground at his feet and he tumbled backwards onto the floor, cracking his head on the marble. Rhys had begun to move towards him, but now he found he couldn't move as blood blossomed on Methos's shirt; then the very ground under him erupted in the spirits buried here, bursting into the air and up his legs, over the ambo and across the floor of the nave towards them. They spilled from corners of the chancel and poured in a wave, roiling black and gray and red.
He had just enough time to raise his hands, but that was pointless, and he knew it even as he did it. They weren't corporeal, though they were most assuredly real, and they flowed past his hands, ribbons of energy aiming for his chest, mouth, groin. When the first one hit him full force, Rhys bowed backwards completely, the arch of his spine supported by spirits that flowed around and under it to cradle his chest in mid air.
His throat burned and all he could see was a burst of energy in front of him, spinning tricolored, like his eye. The ball of color convalesced for a second, then began to gather more into it, ululating in and out of its own space in a growing and shrinking circle. He tried to wave his hands, but they weren't cooperating. Something inside him felt like ripping, like the tearing of his own rib cage, cartilage separating from bone, marrow core shrinking from the inside.
All of the lights above him went out, blanketing the room with darkness, save for the light coming from the vortex of energy. Rhys tried to move his legs, but like his arms, they were immobile. Now, he thought sadly, would be a good time to pray to Danu, but he couldn't make the words come out.
Instead, the ball of energy moved in close, almost blinking, looking at him. If he had to guess he would have said that it was pleased.
It was then that he understood that it was calling him by name, a certain name, a secret name, one that no ghost on this side of the country, on this continent, should even know. It was calling him by the name that had marked him once as lord and master, and even as it slipped up to his lips to fill his mouth.
The second it touched his tongue he knew that it wasn't going to hurt; it slid down his throat and moved through him like current, like something that could bypass all of his organs and course right out through his toes if he let it.
It tasted like metal cherries.
Methos's body arched up, his chest seeming to fuse with Rhys's, his hands clawing the marble stones of the floor for a second before latching onto Rhys's arms and pulling him down. The taste of cherries slid down his tongue and then lower, through his cock and out, like coming again and again. Rhys thrust against Methos, not really seeing him, not seeing much of anything, but riding everything like a terrified man waiting for his horse to come to a stop.
When everything seemed to subside, when he tasted stale air again, when Methos's lungs drew in a sharp gasp of air that meant that he was alive again, Rhys rolled off of him and assessed his own ability to move his limbs. His lungs felt tight and his stomach wasn't too keen on keeping all of the liquor in his stomach.
"You crazy ass sonuvabitch," he coughed at the ceiling before turning his head to look at Methos, who was waving one of his hands in the air in front of his face. "What happened to survivalism? What happened to last man standing, that being you?"
Methos smiled drowsily and coughed up a bit of blood, letting it run down the side of his face. "Hee."
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
They had left the church at a slow crawl. Methos had wanted to go faster, but his body, being newly reanimated and not perhaps a little sucked dry by Rhys's machinations, was less than cooperative. He had to settle for limping along the sidewalk on Rhys's arm and monitoring the way he set his feet on the ground very carefully, lest he bring his full weight down in a bent ankle instead of the flat of his foot.
Rhys, for his part, was a good crutch, and like all good crutches, wooden or otherwise, remained silent. It allowed them to hightail it away from the church, whose interior alarms were still going off with the deafening volume of a pipe organ. But when they were about six blocks away, Methos steered them deliberately to an alleyway so that he could lean against something that was not propelling him forward. He let go of Rhys's shoulder and crashed chest first into a brick wall, gripping the grooves of the mortar with his fingertips.
When he was sufficiently sure that he could stay upright, he turned around and braced his back against the wall, waving off Rhys's steadying hands.
Rhys bounced off a building with his shoulder and coughed. "Not that I'm all about talking about feelings, but what the hell was that all about?"
Methos shrugged. If he had known that the night had been leading to, well, *that,* he most certainly would never had boarded the plane.
"I dunno," was what he decided to say. His tongue still didn't like the "t" sound. "Seemed like th' righ' thin' da do." His chest twitched with a muscular contraction and he winced. "A' th' momen'. Y'know."
He wanted to check the time, but he was pretty sure that his watch had stopped, like it always did. He made a mental note to switch back to a wind up instead of those cheap battery deals. The blood on his shirt was tacky and sticking to his chest.
"Was that a jumpstart?" Rhys said, his voice almost coy. Definitely amused.
Methos smiled at the graffiti on the opposite wall, which assured him that if he called Miranda's "moms," he'd have a great time. He also considered the warning below it that said she had "gonnereah."
He wasn't sure what to say to Rhys. That he had needed something from him? That Rhys had needed something from him? That Death's greatest companion was the one who mastered him? That led to places he didn't want to go. Or maybe just to places he said he didn't want to go. And now everything was horribly circular.
"Vroom, vroom," was what he decided.
Rhys laughed, and then, without warning, pressed him into the alley wall. One hand went to Methos's shoulder, the other to the healed wound on his chest. Rhys stuck his knee between Methos's two. It shouldn't have been immobilizing. What was frightening was that it was effective.
"And here, all these years, I had thought you harbored ambitions to the Queen's bed," Rhys said in a low voice. His eyepatch was askew, and Methos could see the scars that ripped across the perfect flesh of the eye. He was hyper aware of the proximity of those full lips to his, of how much that scar reminded him of another one just like it, if a little less severe.
Instead he took a breath. "I wouldn't survive a night in her bed," he murmured.
It was Rhys's turn to laugh, a tight chuckle that sounded like a cough. If his throat was as constricted as Methos's he didn't show it. "Oh I know you would. Your is a hearty race, Immortal." One of his hands reached up and caressed the curve of Methos's jaw before settling on his neck, not squeezing, just simply placing it over the area of death, as if saying, 'I know your secret.'
"I was never interested in her bed," Methos finally said, trying not to say what he might have said if this had been any one else, if he had been drunker, if this had been a poorly written romantic summer blockbuster.
Because this wasn't about romance, not in the least. "Of course not," Rhys whispered in his ear, his hand still resting on Methos's throat, his other hand somewhere in the vicinity of Methos's cock, but not really there for anything sexual. Rhys didn't swing that way, not really, all bourbon aside.
It occurred to him that there was something wrong in the way Rhys looked at him, and not literally in the ha-ha funny sans-depth-perception way.
"I had never thought you'd be sidhe-struck," Rhys whispered in his ear, his face so close that Methos could smell his breath, alcoholic and heady. He closed his eyes when Rhys pressed his cheek to his and licked the shell of his ear. "Of all the creatures on this earth, Lord Death."
Methos pulled away enough to tilt his head back, opening his eyes into the misting rain that had begun to fall moments earlier. Steam rose from the dumpster across from them. "I'm not," he tried to say, but his voice wasn't as strong as he had meant it to be, and therefore undermined the veracity of that statement.
He didn't want to admit that he'd unloaded a round into his own chest because of it. That what he'd done had been the only worthy gift he could think of to offer.
Rhys tightened his grip on Methos's throat and moved forward, wedging one knee between both of his, and it was all he could do not to move into the man. This wasn't what they should be doing, no matter how much it seemed like a good idea. Rhys would hate him for it later, but now, oh now, he was all silver and blue and filled with the ghosts of dead things, drawn to Methos and the memory of all the death he had brought to him in the past.
The rain grew heavier and he heard thunder in the distance. Rhys's hair was plastered to his head in chunky waves. His one cornflower eye seemed to pinwheel with shades of blue.
"And then what should I call you, then eh?" he whispered, face dead serious, all humor lost, swallowed. "An indiscretion in the night?" His skin wasn't glowing, and it would never glow for Methos, he knew, but it was still luminescent in the moonlight and the rain, just enough yellow streetlight to offset the whiteness with incandescence. Methos felt the hand tighten around his throat and click things in his spine in ways he hadn't remembered. He almost came right then and there.
Instead, he ventured a hand inside the waistband of Rhys's jeans, undoing the buttons and finding the man's cock soft and already quite slick with come. He made a noise in his throat that was supposed to cover wry amusement, but actually sounded like the muted bark of an elephant seal.
"Yeah, you already went there," Rhys told him, his tongue tracing the corner of his lower jaw. "Well, in spirit anyway."
"Rather takes the fun out of it," he mumbled, mostly to himself.
Rhys made a noise that he decided was agreement before running his lips over Methos's and reaching a hand down to undo the buttons of his jeans. Methos wondered if he'd have to rewire his sexual meter, since he'd never in a million years have guessed that Rhys's hand would go, well, *there,* but there it was, fumbling its way past the elastic of his shorts and curling abut him as if he gave hand jobs every day. Or maybe he just needed to reconsider that Rhys lived in a house full of men, or that years of enforced celibacy had made him more flexible, or that-
"Oh," he groaned to the air, "I don't really care."
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Rhys hadn't yet been inside the house when Kitto found him out by the pool at dawn. It had taken him at least an hour to find the car, which hadn't been towed, but instead was right where he had left it. Not that he was capable of recalling where the car was, or where he was after the night's events, but he was acutely aware of his soiled clothing, and even more acutely aware of his need to go home.
He left Methos in the alleyway, leaning against the side of the dumpster ("You go. I'm completely kosher," he'd said. "Let's do this again in another thousand years."), after a few bumbling post coital attempts at cleaning themselves up with cocktail napkins scrounged from coat pockets and a few half hearted sentiments ("You know that is the closest I've ever come to saying thank you," Rhys had mumbled. Methos had chuckled. "Well, then, I'm honored.").
When he had gotten home, he'd pretty much decided not to think too much about the night and instead procured a six pack from an all night convenience store that didn't mind bending the law for a few faded twenties. Then he'd stripped down and spent the early hours of the morning in the cold jacuzzi. He hadn't even noticed Kitto for the first few seconds.
"Everyone else likes the water hot," Kitto said quietly. Rhys might have jumped, but he'd smelled Kitto seconds before he'd spoken. It was a subtle smell, like the dry sin of a snake. He wasn't worried about Kitto, not anymore. He was worried that something had followed him home from the Church. That used to happen before-well, before.
"I turned it on," he said into his third bottle. "But it isn't working."
Kitto's fingertips skimmed the surface of the water. "It is. You're too cold for it to work."
Rhys slipped the eyepatch off his face and tossed it out into the water. He'd known this. It was some new thing of his, probably. He had never remembered his power being this cold before; this was something he had thought would be more in Frost's line of ability.
"They missed you last night," Kitto said, still crouched down, fingers dangling in the water.
Rhys laughed. "No they didn't." He held out an unopened bottle of beer.
Kitto's lips quirked up on one side, and for a minute he looked normal. "No, they didn't."
He had nothing to say to that. Instead, he slid further down in the water and recalled the image of Methos dead in the Church. Something in that image was comforting, hopefully because he knew that Methos would revive, and therein lay the whole temptation; Methos wouldn't die no matter how many times he was killed, something Rhys's power didn't understand but loved. Spending time with the Immortal was like being suspended in time, or in a place or state of being in which there were no consequences for one's actions. But Methos wasn't any ordinary dead spirit, but something that was so layered from all of his accumulated quickenings that it manifested in death as its own cognitive force.
Huh.
Kitto took the bottle from him with an apprehensive look. He slid in the water opposite Rhys and sighed, his limbs seeming to unfold. He was deceptively longer than he seemed. Kitto clipped the bottle cap off with his teeth and spit it off into the darkness.
"You know," he said after a long sip, "I think the water's getting warmer."
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Methos tucked the iPod into his sleeve with his finger on the volume dial and closed his eyes. He liked to listen to it with one finger managing the volume, turning it up and down with the slide of his skin. The phenomenon of touch sensitive technology had delighted him ever since it had been created; it made him feel as if something in this world could tune into his very life pulse and reflect what was there.
Duncan brushed his arm; he opened his eyes long enough to see the other man's profile disappear when he turned away from him. The flight attendant had brought them both scotches in flimsy plastic imitation old fashion glasses that shook a little in the turbulence. Duncan's hand grasped the cup and held it, and Methos watched the movement.
His own cup slid on the tabletop, the amber liquid sliding along the insides of the plastic like a trapped sea. It was in this moment that he understood something that age, and Rhys, had taught him. He didn't grasp the cup to keep it upright, but trusted that it would stay put. Perhaps it was because he was lazy, or maybe he didn't care about a bit of alcohol. It wasn't optimism or laziness, really, but almost a resignation about the nature of things and the capabilities of man that the centuries had given him. It was this that made Rhys's hand slide over the muscles of his stomach when he reached for his weapon or tilt up on two legs in a dark dank bar. A hesitation without carelessness, a carelessness without hesitation.
It was this knowledge about the unfolding of events that had pressed Rhys into Andais's service in the first place, and perhaps it was the reason he had put away his own mask of death, tossing it out into the sea so easily. Even more it was this understanding that drew him to Rhys, to see if this other man was as filled with regret as he was. And what he had learned was even more unsettling.
The past was something that he couldn't recapture, and Methos was well aware of that; but the past being gone was rarely something that he ever regretted. He never should miss the things that he did, and yet, there it was, so heavy in his hand that he couldn't even seem to lift it to still the cup on the tray in front of him, a sorrow that he had no words for because what he missed was so awful he could never speak of it.
When Duncan's shoulder touched his, the vibration from the other man through Methos meant that he was speaking. He used his finger to turn down the hidden iPod. "Pardon?" he mumbled, slouching further down in his seat and trying not to watch the sunlight slide back and forth in the crack of the closed window shade.
"I was wondering how your meeting with the sidhe went," Duncan said lightly. "And you're about to lose your drink."
Methos caught the cup as it was about to tip and raised it to his mouth. "Got it. No worries."
"For both, or just the scotch?"
Methos looked at him out of the corner of his eye. Duncan's face was earnest as always. The question was invasive, or perhaps spending time with Rhys had made him revert a bit back to a further time. Maybe it was the guy still rolling around inside him like yesterday's bad egg salad.
"You ask too many questions," he said jovially. It was just chipper enough that he knew Duncan would have to think before replying. He wasn't going to answer anyway. Instead he turned up the volume and concentrated on the sliver of light trying desperately to invade the plane.
What about everything?
What about aeroplanes and what about ships that drank the sea?
What about the moon and stars? What about soldier battle scars
And all the anger that they eat?
I am not in need.
END
Rating: R
Pairing: Methos/Rhys (Highlander/Hamilton's Merry Gentry Series)
Timeline: Post Caress of Twilight, pre Seduced by Moonlight.
Methos was in the bar, ensconced on his normal barstool and working his way through what was probably his third beer of the night when Duncan arrived. The lights were low, but the TV blazed silently from above the bar. The world's oldest Immortal was eating beer nuts from a bowl in front of him and reading a glossy brochure for an Alaskan Cruise line. One heel was nocked in the bottom rung of his barstool.
"Cruises?" Mac asked casually, throwing his coat on the bar next to him before sitting down and snatching the brochure from Methos's hands. "I thought you didn't like boats."
Methos grabbed the brochure back. "A cruise ship is hardly what I would call a boat. It's more like a moving city." He took a sip of his beer and shook the brochure. "Shopping, casinos, restaurants, swimming pools, movie theatres, everything you could want."
"Bars?" Duncan teased, nodding to Joe as he set the beer in front of him.
Methos drained his glass. "Open twenty-four hours a day."
Joe took the glass from him. "Thank god for international waters."
Methos just shrugged. Duncan laughed and pulled the invitation from his back pocket and slapped it on the bar. "Well, I hope you're not planning to go in the near future, because I," he opened the invitation and slid it in front of Methos, "have an invitation to stay at Sherilyn Firoque's this weekend in Santa Barbara."
Joe stopped in the middle of pouring a black and tan. "Sherilyn Firoque? The designer? How the hell did you get an invite like that?"
Duncan smirked. "I knew her when she was Cheryl Firkenmeyer, sometime housefrau and aspiring dressmaker." He fanned himself with the invitation before Methos snatched it out of his hands and peered at the gold embossing. "She just needed a little start up cash and a few connections."
Joe laughed, shaking his head as he set two filled mugs on a wait tray for his server. "Do you know everyone, Mac?" He ran a hand through his hair and leaned against the bar, taking a sip from his glass.
"Oh yes," Methos answered for him. "Didn't you know? Duncan single handedly fostered the Impressionist movement, the Boxer Rebellion, and the use of polyester in American fashion." He managed to duck when Duncan reached out to cuff his ears. "Oh, too slow."
"So," Duncan drawled, resting his head on Methos's shoulder. "Are you up for it? A weekend of sun, surf and horribly elitist intellectualism?" He batted his eyelashes. "You can lie around in a swimsuit and display ridiculous amounts of disdain for the masses."
Methos shrugged him off. "Oh hell no." He sipped from his beer. "In fact, I don't even think I own a swimsuit."
"I'll buy you one."
"I can't even recall one line of Mencken. What kind of misanthrope could I possibly be? Besides, no one who really hates their fellow man that much ever goes to a place to hang out with a bunch of them."
Duncan tossed the invite back on the bar and shook his head. "Sure they do. You were a member of the Algonquin Table, weren't you?"
Methos made a hand puppet with his fingers. "On the fringes, and that was just for the free booze. Besides, schweetheart, I don't want to belong to a club that would have me for a member, see?"
Duncan rolled his eyes. Methos was all jokes, but underneath he wasn't budging. Duncan had hoped that he'd be able to actually do something for Methos, get him out of the drizzly city for a while. It wasn't that he'd been working too hard, because God knew Methos made sure he never worked hard, but the rain seemed to depress him, for all that he told Duncan "when I was your age, there were unicorns and dragons, and the world was an earthly paradise. Then it rained for forty days and nights."
The fact remained that the last time he'd seen Methos laugh had been three weeks ago. And that was real laughter, not that fake stuff that the body bubbled up as an automatic response to things that were supposed to be humorous. Duncan knew full well where real laughter came from, what it felt like, and more importantly, when it was coming from Methos.
"Oh, there's my girl," Joe said, reaching for the volume control on the television. "Pa pa pa pow."
Methos snorted. "Joe is in deep smit with a sidhe princess." He blinked and looked at the full beer glass that had materialized in front of him. "Joe, thirty seconds in that girl's bed would kill you."
Duncan watched Joe grin and pour himself a shot of sour mash. "Yeah, but what a way to go."
"Princess Meredith NicEssus, the long lost royal of the American Unseelie Court, was spotted last week at Labrys, a popular night club outside of the Holmby Hills area. The Princess was escorted by several of her prospective husbands, also members of the Unseelie court from St Louis."
Methos glanced at the screen and cocked his head. "That's a fine looking woman," he said offhandedly. Duncan stared at the screen, watching the young woman with moonlit skin and tricolored green eyes try to move through the barrage of reporters. Her garnet hair formed a veil that hid her face, and she was shielded from the camera view by a tall man who looked to be made of onyx. They fought their way through the press and into a waiting car. The man helped the princess in before entering the back seat himself. A few other men got into the vehicle, but none of them were as surprisingly visual as the black man; one was white, as if his body was made of alabaster and silver, and another had an eyepatch and a fall of white curly hair. This last one waved to the cameras before getting in the passenger seat and motioning for the driver to move.
Methos set down his beer glass. "Joe, get me the TiVO remote."
Joe handed over the remote warily. "As long as I get it back, buddy." But Methos wasn't listening. He pressed the rewind button and watched the people get out of the car before playing it again. Duncan noticed the other man's face become hard and unreadable as he scanned the bodies and faces of the sidhe on the screen.
"Have a thing for the sidhe?" he asked cheekily.
Methos paused the image on the man with the eyepatch. "Don't knock sex with the fey, MacLeod," he said stonily, eyes staring at the image on the screen. A customer at a table behind them complained loudly about the interruption of the news broadcast. Joe took the remote from Methos's lax hand.
"Okay buddy, freeze frame time is over." He unpaused the picture and they all watched the sidhe and their car drive away in a lightning of flashbulbs.
Methos seemed to revert back to normal instantly, resuming his beer consumption with the automatic ease of one with centuries of experience at hiding inner thoughts. His fingers relaxed against the shiny bar top, his shoulders slumped slightly, and he placed the balls of his feet back on the lower rung of the stool. It was a very tricky and rather convincing act. Finally, he glanced at Duncan without really making eye contact.
"You know," he said jovially, "I think I'll go with you after all."
Duncan didn't buy it for a minute. "What about the club that would have you for a member?"
Methos chugged the last of his beer and smiled. It was almost sweet, which meant that it wasn't good. "I've tried honey, but the AARP demand to see my social security card first."
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Merry was stretching on her deck chair out by the pool, and it was enough to make any man's throat go dry. The sun danced down her skin as the clouds rolled by, and her bathing suit strained in all the right places.
Rhys swallowed and took another pull from the bottled water in his hand. He was supposed to be folding laundry, one of the only acceptable household tasks that the Guards performed on a day to day basis, but he was taking a break. Plus, the only thing left to fold was Merry's underwear, and that was a trial to even touch, especially since she wasn't in them at the time.
Most of the time Rhys tried not to think about the more complex things. He might joke that his biggest problems right now were sharing a room with Frost and Nicca, or maybe learning how to set the clock on the VCR, but in reality, Rhys had been thinking of many many worse things lately, ever since the Nameless had been loosed and then rebound outside the guesthouse in which they were all living.
Merry might have thought that the worst thing he'd been pondering would be his maiming at the hand of goblins, and yes, that was a major issue, especially since they were due to start re-negotiating the terms of Merry's alliance -their alliance-- with Kurag and the goblins. In fact, there wasn't a time when he ever stepped out of the shower and stared at that scarred over socket and didn't think of Siun's arms around him.
He'd get that bitch, but that was just a matter of biding his time.
In reality, Rhys was more preoccupied with reconnecting to the darkness expanding inside him like so many unwinding spools of thread. The Nameless, the First Casting also, had taken a great deal of his abilities, but it had also taken all the lusts that relied on those powers and quashed them into a compact ball that he could tuck in the back of his head. Now that the Nameless had returned things, powers and abilities had slipped back inside him with the stealthy familiarity of a drunken teenager sneaking back into his bedroom after curfew. That hidden knot of emotion, of desires and wants, some of them needs even, were creeping forward into his conscious thought more and more.
He didn't tell anyone, not even Doyle. Especially not Doyle, because if he had, Darkness might insist that he be sent back the Queen. And that wasn't acceptable.
It would be so much easier if this was happening and he was free to indulge some of his darker inclinations, but this wasn't his century, his domain, nor even his freedom to choose what or whom he wanted to do. Instead, he was stuck sharing a woman with four other men, five if Rhys counted Kitto, which he didn't.
Not that he didn't like, correct that, love fucking Merry. It was all the other people he wasn't allowed to fuck who detracted from his enjoyment in the odd moments when he wasn't panting after hot sidhe flesh. Rhys had never been one to refuse the ladies, and now he had to more actively than ever. It had been easier before when he was never far from the court, and one look at Queen Andais had always been enough to ground him in the reality of what would happen to him if he disobeyed. But Merry was almost too accommodating, too lenient, and more and more he forgot the penalty he would pay if he couldn't keep it in his pants.
There were other things his body wanted besides straight sex, and he was getting quite enough straight sex anyway.
He couldn't think about it. He didn't want to think about it. He didn't want to see half of the things he saw now, not because they disturbed him, but because he knew he wasn't supposed to be seeing them. He had given all of this away with the Nameless, and it was supposed to be beyond his reach. It was all supposed to be gone, powers that he shouldn't access because he was no longer Lord of the Dead, no longer a ruler in Hell, but a servant in…
Milton wasn't the best comparison he could make, anyway.
Rhys piled Merry's underwear on top of all of the folded clothes in the basket and carried it down the hall into her bedroom. Last night had been Doyle's night, and the room still had the scent of sex and other things that dripped with the sense of other. Tonight was Frost's night, and the following would be Galen's. Rhys opened the top bureau drawer and began to stack folded blouses and shirts into it.
He could hear splashing outside and the sound of laughing. Merry and Galen being silly, probably. For once, the prospect of being in the sunlight, of sliding through the cool water of the swimming pool, to have her smile at him, wasn't something he wanted.
Rhys threw on a pair of faded jeans and a shirt that might not have even been his, for the tightness of it across his arms, and reached for a pair of shoes. It occurred to him to take a weapon at the last minute and his hand automatically chose Uamhas, an instinct he didn't want to take the time to dissect. He tucked the sword in its trenchcoat sheath, palmed the keys from the hook next to the kitchen door and brushed past Frost on his way out.
"Where are you going?" Frost asked from the hallway. The tone in his voice meant that he expected an answer from Rhys, who didn't plan on giving him one. Well, at least not a good one.
"Out."
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Methos sighed and rolled over on the inflatable raft he had made his home a few hours earlier. He had exhausted himself with the caviar and the champagne, and the beer on tap was some bizarre cranberry concoction that didn't deserve the name of any alcoholic beverage, let alone ale. Duncan had bought him a swimsuit, for which he was grateful, because he could paddle his little island out into the middle of the pool and pretend that he was by himself, if he closed his eyes and blocked out the incessant strains of conversation and smooth jazz that assaulted him from all sides.
On the other hand, he was merely biding his time until he could slip out and steal the rental. He had actual plans and that didn't involve discussing the latent homosexual overtones in the work of Steven Spielberg. Duncan was in his element, mixing it up with the ladies and talking football with some of the more macho men, but Methos wasn't interested in either.
In fact, he decided looking at the streaks of early sunset in the sky, now would be a good time to bow out for the evening. He rolled off the raft into the water and swam to the edge of the pool, pulling himself up and into a standing position so noiselessly he hoped everyone still thought he was out in the middle of Sherilyn's expansive Olympic sized pool.
He had made it to their lush guestroom and had almost finished dressing when Duncan finally found him.
"I knew it," he said, leaning in the doorway, one hand on the jamb. "You do have ulterior motives for being here."
Methos finished tucking his sword into his trenchcoat and sighed. "Maybe I'm just tired of pruning myself in a vat of chlorine." He slipped his knives into the hilts lined in the outer sides of his boots and rolled the cuffs of his jeans down. Duncan's eyes were unreadable when he glanced at him, so he decided to go ahead and load the gun anyway.
"No, I knew it when you brought the gun. After all that fuss you had to go through to declare it, I knew you'd only bring it unless you were sure you'd wear it."
Methos snorted. "The TSA are right bitches, aren't they?" A female voice called Duncan's name, and they both looked in the direction of its origin. "You have made quite a splash with the ladies, haven't you? Shoshanna Lonstein doesn't want to leave you alone for one minute."
Duncan grinned that soft leer of 'I'm so gonna get laid' without seeming offensive a face that Methos never had been able to pull off. Maybe it had something to do with his nose. In any case, Methos was sure that Duncan could find other things to do with this room, now that he was vacating it, at least temporarily. He slipped his hands into Duncan's coat hanging over the back of the desk chair and found the car keys.
"At least tell me where you're going, then," Duncan said, sipping from the champagne flute in his hand, his eyes bemused. If Methos didn't know any better he might have thought Duncan was going to try to stop him. But he didn't try to stop him as he walked by, didn't grab his arm, didn't block his way.
"Can't," he called over his shoulder.
"Why not?"
Methos shrugged. "Because I'm not sure."
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Wandering aimlessly had lost its shine about an hour previous, but to be truthful, Rhys was still in the process of retracing his steps back to where he must have parked the car. It was a tad embarrassing, not being able to remember, but every part of this city looked like the other. Besides, his parking meter must have run out of quarters hours ago, so the cops were probably towing the car by now. Rhys shrugged his shoulders in his coat, shifted his sword a little in its sheath, and looked for the spinning yellow lights of a tow truck.
He'd been out for hours, much longer than he'd expected, but there had been a double feature at the Cineplex, and this time it hadn't been an Ingmar Bergman marathon. Nope, Nora Prentiss followed by Double Indemnity. He'd eaten a whole box of Sno-Caps against his better judgement, so when the films had ended it had been dark outside and he was sugar wired. Rhys had decided to walk as far as he could, and then just walk back. It had sounded like a good idea at the time.
The area was getting less and less upscale, more and more seedy; Rhys wasn't concerned for his safety. If he had thought deeper about it, he might have admitted that he was looking for a fight, for a reason to use the sword tucked into his coat.
The streets were deserted in the warehouse district. Rhys was fairly sure that his car wasn't here, but that wasn't the foremost thing on his mind. In fact not much of anything was really on his mind except for a feeling that he needed to walk further. His hands shoved in his pockets and whistling a tune from some commercial, Rhys contented himself by putting one foot in front of the other.
There was a flash of lightning three blocks down and a loud cracking noise, not so much like thunder as like something exploding. Rhys stopped whistling, but he kept on walking, one of his hands leaving its pocket and moving to the inside of his coat. The lightning flashed again, though it wasn't coming from the sky. Either there was some sort of fey battle going on, or Big Trouble in Little China had been more a documentary than the action comedy he'd taken it as.
"It's all in the reflexes," he said as he unsheathed Uamhas and swung her around in an arc. He was curious, and had no intention getting involved, but it couldn't hurt to be prepared. Every time he wasn't prepared he ended up losing a quart of blood or so.
The lightning danced out from the inside of an alleyway, the tips of it licking the corners and the curb. There might have been someone screaming, but it was hard to make out over the car alarms going off and the exploding streetlights. Luckily there was a full moon. Rhys stopped short a block and watched for a few more seconds as the lightning seemed to become less active and its reach lessened. No matter what he might think about the feel of electricity in his body, this was neither the time nor the place, not to mention that a few jolts of electricity were a lot different from 1.21 gigawatts.
Once it seemed that the lightning had ceased, it seemed safe enough to investigate. If it were fey, then he'd want to see what was going on, even if it was just to report back to Doyle. And if it were some Asian storm god, then well, wouldn't that just be peachy? Maybe it would be some Asian goddess, and this could get really fun.
He peeked around the corner in search of live bodies, preferably curvy ones. No such luck.
A man in a trenchcoat knelt in the middle of the alleyway, both hands flat out in front of him. It occurred to Rhys that there was one option he hadn't thought of; not surprising, since he hadn't seen this special effect in particular since the death of the historical Jesus. Immortals and the sidhe rarely crossed paths, mostly because the sidhe were wrapped up in their own diplomacies. Immortals weren't magic, not in the way that relied on faerie. Rhys had had the pleasure of meeting several over the course of his lifetime. Their magic was innate and uncontrollable, and it only served themselves.
Rhys readied his sword, studying the man on the ground. He was panting, gasping really, which was only logical considering that he'd just had enough electricity pumped through to him send him back in time if he'd only been going eighty eight miles and hour. He couldn't see much of him with his head down, except that he was lanky, with black hair. He still had a sword within reach of one hand, which meant that he was still dangerous.
"You alright there, buddy?" he said jovially from the entrance to the alleyway. The man's head shot up in alarm and his hand found the hilt of his sword. His whole body jerked to life as if the weapon held a revitalizer of some sort. He left his knees and rolled up onto his feet, standing very unsteadily. His shoulders bowed inward for a moment, his head still ducked down so that Rhys couldn't see his face.
Rhys readjusted his hold on his sword. Behind him, car alarms shrilled and beeped. "I said, are you-"
The man lifted his head, and for the first time Rhys got a glimpse of his face, long sharp features, almost familiar, eyes completely clear, not muddled with confusion or pain. In fact, there was something recognizable in the glint in his eye. He readied his blade out in front of him and cocked his head to one side. Rhys didn't like the look of that.
"Well well well, Cromm Cruach," the man drawled, his sword still out and unmoving, so still the light that reflected from its blade didn't waver for a moment.
Rhys smiled. "That isn't my name anymore." He shifted his weight to better move when the man moved. He needed the upper hand in this fight. "They call me Rhys now."
"What a shame," the man told him before lunging forward and bringing up sword in an underhanded swing that seemed an arc of liquid metal. Rhys countered it and for one second his heart beat with nothing but the anticipation that potential bloodlust could bring. When their blades kissed, Rhys moved in with his whole body, putting all of his weight behind the sword.
"Something tells me they don't call you Death anymore, either," he said to Methos, giving up on animosity and settling on grinning like a fool.
Methos's face reflected his own amusement, and he slid his blade down Rhys's as he lowered it. The gesture was unnecessary, but the sound of metal on metal cut through Rhys's lower abdomen in ways that he didn't want to think about.
"No, they don't," Methos said. "They call me Mr. Tibbs."
Rhys disengaged and lowered his weapon. "I see you're still an asshat."
"And you still get turned on by swordplay."
Rhys didn't flush, though if he had been anyone else he might have. "I guess so," he mumbled in his best 'gosh darn it' voice. "Don’t you?"
Methos lowered his sword and held out his hand to take Rhys's. "Not as much as I used to, but sometimes, when the magic's right." He clasped Rhys's hand at the forearm and pulled the sidhe in for a tight embrace. "It's been a while, my friend."
Rhys closed his eyes for a second and lowered his head to Methos's shoulder. "I thought you'd be long dead."
He could feel Methos cough out a laugh. "As often as I hear that, you'd think I'd have a ready response." He blinked. "And as many times as I've said that, I think it is my ready response." Rhys could feel him loosening the hold, pulling away, letting go. For a split second it felt like the severing of a limb. "Let's go get a drink."
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"So Andais just let you go?" Methos sipped at his bourbon and reclined in his chair even more without letting his coat fall open and expose his sword. Rhys's sword was short enough that he could comfortably slouch in his trenchcoat without it being seen. Plus it didn't matter if anyone saw him with it; Americans gave the sidhe a lot of slack, even the cops.
Rhys lifted his glass to his lips, but the sip he took was minimal. "The Queen has lifted the geas for Princess Meredith and Princess Meredith only." He looked uncomfortable talking about it. His eyes shifted to the door, as if any minute he expected a threat to walk through it. Maybe one would.
This was one of the seedier bars in the area, and they had picked it for that purpose. The bartender looked as if he'd never seen a sidhe before, which might have very well been the truth. He'd given them a bottle of his best bourbon, something his patrons normally couldn't afford; Methos could tell by the dust on the bottle. The two of them had taken seats in the back facing the door. Old habits died hard.
"That kind of bites," Methos muttered into his glass. He meant it, but one look at Rhys convinced him that the man was torn on what to say.
It was nighttime, and that meant anything he said would be carried back to the Queen of Air and Darkness. So instead, he shrugged and shrouded his face with his hair before saying, "Oh, it's not so bad. It's the sharing that's a bitch."
Methos reached over and refilled his glass from the bottle. "I don't recall you ever having to share before."
Rhys made a sour face, and the cheap red lights from the neon Budweiser sign in the window painted his moonlight skin and hair in a familiar red, though more garish and tacky than he had ever looked millennia ago. He leaned back on two chair legs and draped one hand on the back of his chair.
"I know, I know, that was more your thing, wasn't it? How are your brothers, anyway?"
Methos closed his eyes. With any other man, he might have said something sharp, searing, funny. Instead he opened them and communicated everything in his face, something he hadn't done since The Americas were new born. The juke box in the corner started something slow and hard, The Blue Oyster Cult or some such dark riveting song that reminded Methos of the slow circular grinding that can be done between two people fully clothed, a precursor to things sticky and possibly bloody.
Rhys sitting across from him called up thoughts he didn't really want to ponder. He didn't really even know why he had come here. Had he wanted to dredge up memories from the past that they had shared? Was that really something that either of them needed to relive?
Rhys, not Cromm Cruach, sat across from him. Rhys was someone he didn't even know, someone less than he had been, with his missing eye a more then physical reminder of that. Methos wasn't missing any body parts, but he knew that he was well versed in his own diminishment.
He had read a book about old gods sitting in American bars, morning their loss of followers and waxing poetic on the old days. Byron flashed into his mind's eye. Poets and old gods, thunder and rains of lighting. It was all bullshit, and they were fools for even thinking to recapture it.
"Just as well," Rhys muttered, "that Caspian was one crazy fuck."
"I never worried about Caspian," Methos said offhandedly. "You know to never worry about those people."
For a second there was another matchflare of understanding, bright, scintillating, something that would have been perfumed with a pleasant acrid smell if it could have been an odor. Rhys's one eye flared to life, all three shades of blue becoming whorls of something deeper. Methos had never been able to resist the eyes of the sidhe. It was one of the reasons he kept as far from them as possible.
Rhys drained his glass, but he didn't reach for a refill. "What brings you to L.A.?"
Methos blinked a few times before answering. He couldn't very well say that he'd seen Rhys on the evening news. That would sound sentimental and full of indications he didn't really feel. Anything less than the truth though, would be an insult.
"An old friend is attending some soiree in Santa Barbara, and I came for the sun." That was the truth, at least the real truth he'd told everyone else. Methos was of the belief that the truth was what you made it.
"And the little head rolling adventure you had in that alley way?"
Methos sighed and shook his head. Perhaps he should have another. "That was a complete accident. The headhunters seem to follow my traveling companion around." He reached for the bottle and missed. Three glasses of bourbon on an empty stomach was a bad idea. "I suppose it's only natural that they start to rub off on me."
Rhys snorted and let his chair tilt a little more precariously than before. "If I didn't know any better, I'd say that you're not so happy about having to wield that pig sticker you have." He reached over his chest to the table and snagged his glass. Three young women at the bar eyed them and giggled; that was the last thing Methos needed: a gaggle of girls intent on picking either of them up.
"You seemed to be ready to use yours," he offered, glancing away from their audience before he accidentally made eye contact. "Have the police given you special clearance to be carrying that thing around?"
Rhys made wide eyes. "Sword, officer? What sword?"
Methos resented the sidhe for many things. Glamour was one of the many. "You so suck, he mumbled into his glass as he looked away and out the door. "A very great deal."
Rhys waved a hand. "Actually, our swords were always accepted, and then they were grandfathered in at the Treaty of Sidhe cohabitance in 1865." He ran a hand through his hair and adjusted his eyepatch. Methos wondered what it felt like to have this lack of depth perception. He'd never irrevocably lost an eye, and the one time he'd lost his eyesight, he'd just killed himself repeatedly until he'd woken up hale and whole. It meant that Rhys couldn't use a gun very well, but Methos was betting that his body remembered what using any other bladed weaponry was like enough to compensate for the lack of depth perception.
It would be rude of him to ask about the eye outright; he'd had too much experience with the fey for such an action on his part to be excusable. If Rhys wanted to volunteer this information, then he would. Otherwise Methos would have to sit and wonder what could have taken the eye of the Lord of the Dead.
The jukebox decided on something much more ethnic; "the one Latin song" blared to life from its rusty innards. Methos had a theory that all Latin songs were mathematically the same. He thought to tell this to Rhys as he might have to Duncan or Joe, but Rhys wasn't Mac, and this wasn't the kind of meeting that was for idle chatter. In fact, he didn't know what this was.
Usually when he didn't understand what kind of situation he was in, Methos made sure that he was in it as briefly as possible. Instead, he'd come here, taken a head, which, now that he thought about it, was sitting inside him as poorly as a half cooked pork bun from a disreputable market stall. In fact, whomever he'd had the displeasure of absorbing tonight didn't like liquor much of all, and he wasn't done fighting.
Rhys sighed and half closed his one eye, but Methos knew he was anything but tired. Instead, he was watching the group of girls at the bar, partly for threats, and partly out of interest. None of them were particularly pretty, even though one or two of them was well stacked. If he recalled anything correctly, Rhys liked the…fuller ones. Maybe it was because sidhe women were always small breasted.
"Do you remember Albion?" Methos said suddenly to him, refilling his glass and recalling the past, both against his better judgement. Somehow, he had guessed that this was the way the night was going to go the moment he rewound the TiVO in the bar.
Rhys grinned and let all of his chair legs thud onto the floor, leaning in conspiratorially. "That barmaid with the red dress and the club foot."
Methos poured the remains of the bottle into Rhys's glass. "And the man out of nowhere with the three mules and that, what was that, a bag of potatoes?"
"Yams," Rhys corrected.
They paused for a minute and then said synchronically, "Rebecca, I brung ye y'er dowry, me lass," before collapsing into laughter.
"Ah," Methos sighed, leaning back into the chair still clutching the empty bourbon bottle. He really didn't have anything to add. He didn't have a point to any of this. "Do you miss it?"
Rhys looked at him quickly, too quickly. That was almost too direct to be acceptable, but Methos knew he could get away with it. The eye seemed to swirl in its socket, cornflower blue spinning in a pinwheel, even though Methos knew that it was just the light.
He opened his mouth to tell Rhys that it was all right, that he didn't have to answer, that he was sorry that he had asked, but their gaggle of groupie from the bar had finally had enough shots to work up the nerve to saunter over. Rhys chair legs left the ground and his hand strayed over his stomach to the coat that hung from the back of his chair. His hair tumbled in his eyes, but Methos knew he could see everything around them perfectly. He knew because he himself was fully aware of it all as well.
Death never forgot some things.
The one in front, a tall, robust woman with too high hair and too little shirt, jutted one hip out to the side and rested her hand on it. Massive cleavage strained and for a moment, Methos saw a barmaid in a red dress.
"Hello, ladies," he said, draining his glass. Rhys shook his head and let his hair fly back from his face. It was probably good that he was wearing the eyepatch; what lay underneath was unsettling.
Rhys smiled and it was like the sun coming out. Methos had forgotten about the glamour capabilities of the fey, but he had also forgotten just how damned gorgeous they were even without it. He'd seen the show before, but for a mere mortal, it must have been devastating. Even without the eye, what was left was stunning.
"What can we do for you?" Rhys said brightly. His "shucks darn" attitude wasn't going to deter these women from thinking he'd be going home with them for a four way tonight. The bartender brought over a bottle, something horribly out of place in a dive like this, Johnnie Walker Blue Label from the looks of it. The room was dim and Methos's vision was less than trust-worthy.
The best way to proceed was simply to unscrew the cap and fill his glass with one of the finest scotch whiskeys in the world. Or something. Rhys finger trailed away from his hilt and over to his glass, which he slid over to Methos with two fingers, his eye not leaving their still standing company.
The leader with the tube top from hell smiled, and he had to admit that she had a great smile. Only dental work or a childhood of whole milk could produce teeth like that. He had half a mind to invite them for a drink, but for the simple fact that they shouldn't hear anything he had to say, and Rhys was not a free man, no matter how he tried to play it.
"You're one of them elves, right?" Rhys's chair legs hit the floor with a thud. Methos stopped in mid pour. Americans couldn't be that faerie stupid, still, could they?
Rhys closed his eyes, and when he opened them, he grinned. His eye no longer glowed, and something in Methos was more than disappointed to see that it was now just an eye, albeit a rather attractive one.
"I'm afraid, ladies, that the term elves is less than accurate, or complementary," Methos said suddenly, not sure why he bothered to interfere, especially since he generally enjoyed watching uncomfortable situations.
"No no, Lana," said girl number two, dubbed that because she was the second one to speak, "they're called fay. Right?" Girl number two looked to Methos for assent, as if Rhys couldn't have better answered her question.
"Yes," Rhys said cheerfully. "Fey as in gay." He winked and drained his glass. "I would ask you ladies to join us, but I'm afraid we're not in any mood for company."
With a bit of satisfaction and a little bit of surprise, Methos watched their faces fall. The conversation had been lulling, loaded down with things that he and Rhys couldn't or didn't want to say to each other. He had thought that Rhys might welcome the distraction, especially since it came in the female form. The first one, Lana, grinned a knowing smile and bent down to whisper something into Rhys's ear, and Methos got more than enough of a glimpse down the front of her blouse, a feat for such a tightly fitting garment. It was all he could do not to roll his eyes.
Rhys chuckled. "I'll think about it, but right now I'm sorry to say I'm not up to that particular task." Lana looked a little disappointed, but Rhys in full charming form, kissed her hand and sent the three girls back to the bar with his best wistful smile.
When they were gone, Methos leaned back on two legs as his companion had done and found that it was much more comfortable than the straight-backed slouch he'd been affecting. "'Fey as in gay'?" he asked with raised eyebrows.
Rhys grinned. "Let's put it on a T-shirt." His hands ran through his hair. "We’ll get you one that says 'I left my head in San Francisco'."
Methos shook his head. So they were back to lame jokes and scotch. How was this different from any other night at any other bar?
"Do you ever want to feel the dead again?" Rhys asked him without looking away from his glass. Well, this was why it was different.
It was a tricky question, and Methos wasn't sure how to answer it. He'd anticipated that they'd come to this, but he hadn't been sure how to answer it then, and he wasn't any surer now. He had never felt the intimacy with the deceased that Rhys had, but then again, he had just been Death, not the Lord of the Dead himself. Methos was more like the DJ and Rhys was the rapper, really, when it came down to it.
Methos wondered where his glass had gone for about ten seconds before realizing that he'd dropped it on the floor. "Huh," he said to the shards at his feet.
Rhys didn't seem to notice. Nor did anyone else in the room, which might have been because Jimi's "Little Wing" was blaring at such an amazing decibel that he was surprised he heard Rhys's voice at all. Instead, the sidhe glanced over at him finally, following Methos's eyes to the broken glass on the floor. "Aaaand you're kicked, old friend."
Methos slapped a fifty on the table and stood, rearranging his coat and trying not to look too obviously like he was rearranging his coat; this meant that of course because he was drunk he was being way to obvious about rearranging his coat because he didn't want people to know that he was drunk. The more he thought about it, this was a no win situation.
"I used to be better than this," he said, and stopped, because what he had meant to say was that he used to have a better drinking tolerance than this.
Rhys slapped him on the back and smiled, but it didn't reach his eye. "We were, you know, we were."
Methos waved to their group of ex-admirers and wondered if they thought he and Rhys were leaving to shag. The very thought was so alien that it would haunt him for the rest of the night.
He wouldn't think about that. Rhys was the poster child for happy heterosexuals.
He clutched at Rhys's shoulder for a second, realizing that he didn't need to stand because he was not only standing already, but walking out the door. Well then, if his body was this far ahead of his brain, he'd better just give control over to it for a while, and hope it didn't decide to do anything embarrassing, like urinate on itself or projectile vomit or make a pass at Rhys.
Shit. Now he *knew* he wouldn't be able to forget that thought. It called all kinds of pictures to his head that he-
Rhys helped him up before he even realized that he'd collided with the door. This night was turning out to be all kinds of humbling.
Rhys negotiated the door for him, which was a blessing. The act of standing had made the drunkenness seem more poignant, more pronounced, but then again, it always did. He capped a hand on Rhys's shoulder again when they were clear of the jukebox and the smell of whiskey and stale beer. The sidhe looked at him through that one blue eye, a center for Methos to concentrate on instead of the man's lips or the hollow of his throat. He didn't mean to keep coming back to the eye, but aside from the fact that it was very blue, it was also tri-colored, something he didn't see much of now days. And there was the fact that there was only one of them in Rhys's head, whereas the last time he'd seen the man there had been two. It was a shift to the perception.
"My friend," he said harshly, "Let's go talk to the dead."
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
"Now *this*," Rhys said loudly, spreading his arms wide and doing a little spin. "*This* is a graveyard." He grinned from ear to ear and dropped down to the ground to press his ear to the floor. Methos hung back and sat on the arm of a pew.
They were in the middle of the new Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, built two years ago in the middle of Los Angeles on the site of an older chapel, a mausoleum, and more importantly a burial ground for the Gabrielino-Tongva tribe. The place was rife with dead things. Rhys didn't need to put his ear to the ground to hear anything better; the pulse of the dead beat inside his chest as he walked though the doors, moving through him like a liquid that left an oily residue.
It had actually been very easy to get in, as cameras were fooled by glamour, and Rhys was lucky he was still in any condition to be doing anything remotely magical, since the world was spinning on a broken axis. Methos seemed worse off than he was, but he was doing his best not to show it. They had walked here, or rather staggered here, singing old drinking songs and war chants until Methos had been able to drunkenly start them on "A Gest of Robyn Hode" for about twenty verses before they were forced to make the rest up in Old English.
And so Methos had let them in with some of his tricksy ways, and Rhys kept them hidden from modern surveillance equipment. They were betting that the cameras didn't have sound, or rather, Rhys was hoping, because he'd been screaming for about five minutes, and now he was face down on the floor, trying to breathe the spirits of the dead through a foot of marble.
He hadn't noticed it until a few hours ago, when Methos had smiled serpentine at him and poured the first drink that he had let something dark in him start to expand like a dried out sponge thrown in a pool of water, an ash snake firework that poured out of nothing. Methos was the catalyst for his willingness to spread about and loll in the spirits of the dead, letting them lick at him like so many snake tongues.
Part of him remembered Methos being a catalyst for many things.
"You look kind of," Methos said, not finishing the sentence and instead sliding down the edge of the pew to land on his rump on the floor. Rhys lifted his head a bit so that his view wasn't so sideways.
"Do you think that we're less badass than we used to be?"
Methos took a really long time to respond to that, but in the end, his head flopped towards Rhys and his shoulders shrugged. "You," he began, then stopped. "You are playing bedboy to Princess Meredith, and I, well," he rolled his head back to look at the altar in front of them. "I will never be king."
Rhys smiled and placed his cheek against the cool floor. If he closed his eyes it felt like something else. "It's good to be the king."
Methos barked a laugh. "You can be my king, then," he said, his voice warbly for a second and it took Rhys longer than normal to realize that he wasn't really mishearing Methos, and also that he sounded funny because Rhys was starting to black out. A bit. He never really blacked out. Not really. It was a thing.
Things were starting to crawl out of the corners of the church, things that weren't fully formed. One was made of dark, and another of the shadow that haunted the edges of his bedroom drapes in the early morning. One was the color and texture of seaweed rotting on flotsam, and another that came from under him seemed to smell like the tangy metallic taint of rusty chains.
"Your king," he said to them, trying to focus and pushing up on his hands.
Methos pulled a flask from his pocket, but didn't unscrew it. He pulled his sword from his jacket and laid it between them, cursing. "That's too damn heavy, and pointy. I think I made a hole in my coat." He illustrated the complaint by sticking his hand into his pocket and wiggling two escaped fingers on the other side. "This was Ralph Lauren."
"Ralph, like vomit," Rhys said absently, eyes on the rolling mist of black that was crawling over the pew behind Methos towards him.
Methos rolled his eyes. "Only if you saw his spring collection last year."
Rhys watched something claw its way up the ambo and roil down the marble steps and into the aisle. One wave of void raised an appendage and used the pews to pull itself closer to him. He wasn't sure what he would do when it reached him, but before it did, it surged forward and then dissipated into a gust of iron filings and smacked him in the face.
He coughed.
"What?" Methos said. "Seriously though, don't puke in here. There's limits and, like holy shit." He pulled the sword closer to him, as if he sensed the thing that had been moving closer to him without ever seeing it.
"Did you-" Rhys started, then realized when he looked at Methos that if he had just seen what Rhys had seen, he wouldn't be just sitting on the floor, letting the dark seep around him like so much-
"You should get up," he said to the Immortal suddenly. He didn't like the way that the shadows were collecting around Methos's sword, and he certainly didn't like the droning noise that they made. The guttering candles over in the chancel went out, leaving them with a few dim overhead lamps.
He shoved up to his knees and stared hard at the floor. He wouldn't look up. Voices came from under him, from behind him, growing louder until he could actually make out what they were saying, even if they didn't seem to be actual words. His head began to pound.
"Why did you bring me here?" he said softly. Methos made some sort of whimpering noise, and when he finally raised his head to look at the other man, he found that his vision was blurred, contracted, like through a tube. Methos smiled, weakly and fumbled with his sword. The other hand dug in his coat.
"There's something that we need," Methos said, eyeing the ground. "I think I'm having a flashback, because the ground is soggy."
The marble under Rhys's fingers seemed to ripple, and he wasn't sure whether it was real or what his other sense was telling him: this ground was replete with the souls of the dead, the pressure of his fingers, the power rising from his fingers enough to cause them to flow to the surface of the rock.
Something seemed to carve a piece out of his chest, like the scraping of a woodcutting.
"I need," he said, making it a statement. Methos cocked his head at him and raised an eyebrow. "I do."
"Huh," Methos replied finally, lowering the gun and bringing it around. "Don't we all."
And he shot himself in the chest. The gun thudded to the ground at his feet and he tumbled backwards onto the floor, cracking his head on the marble. Rhys had begun to move towards him, but now he found he couldn't move as blood blossomed on Methos's shirt; then the very ground under him erupted in the spirits buried here, bursting into the air and up his legs, over the ambo and across the floor of the nave towards them. They spilled from corners of the chancel and poured in a wave, roiling black and gray and red.
He had just enough time to raise his hands, but that was pointless, and he knew it even as he did it. They weren't corporeal, though they were most assuredly real, and they flowed past his hands, ribbons of energy aiming for his chest, mouth, groin. When the first one hit him full force, Rhys bowed backwards completely, the arch of his spine supported by spirits that flowed around and under it to cradle his chest in mid air.
His throat burned and all he could see was a burst of energy in front of him, spinning tricolored, like his eye. The ball of color convalesced for a second, then began to gather more into it, ululating in and out of its own space in a growing and shrinking circle. He tried to wave his hands, but they weren't cooperating. Something inside him felt like ripping, like the tearing of his own rib cage, cartilage separating from bone, marrow core shrinking from the inside.
All of the lights above him went out, blanketing the room with darkness, save for the light coming from the vortex of energy. Rhys tried to move his legs, but like his arms, they were immobile. Now, he thought sadly, would be a good time to pray to Danu, but he couldn't make the words come out.
Instead, the ball of energy moved in close, almost blinking, looking at him. If he had to guess he would have said that it was pleased.
It was then that he understood that it was calling him by name, a certain name, a secret name, one that no ghost on this side of the country, on this continent, should even know. It was calling him by the name that had marked him once as lord and master, and even as it slipped up to his lips to fill his mouth.
The second it touched his tongue he knew that it wasn't going to hurt; it slid down his throat and moved through him like current, like something that could bypass all of his organs and course right out through his toes if he let it.
It tasted like metal cherries.
Methos's body arched up, his chest seeming to fuse with Rhys's, his hands clawing the marble stones of the floor for a second before latching onto Rhys's arms and pulling him down. The taste of cherries slid down his tongue and then lower, through his cock and out, like coming again and again. Rhys thrust against Methos, not really seeing him, not seeing much of anything, but riding everything like a terrified man waiting for his horse to come to a stop.
When everything seemed to subside, when he tasted stale air again, when Methos's lungs drew in a sharp gasp of air that meant that he was alive again, Rhys rolled off of him and assessed his own ability to move his limbs. His lungs felt tight and his stomach wasn't too keen on keeping all of the liquor in his stomach.
"You crazy ass sonuvabitch," he coughed at the ceiling before turning his head to look at Methos, who was waving one of his hands in the air in front of his face. "What happened to survivalism? What happened to last man standing, that being you?"
Methos smiled drowsily and coughed up a bit of blood, letting it run down the side of his face. "Hee."
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
They had left the church at a slow crawl. Methos had wanted to go faster, but his body, being newly reanimated and not perhaps a little sucked dry by Rhys's machinations, was less than cooperative. He had to settle for limping along the sidewalk on Rhys's arm and monitoring the way he set his feet on the ground very carefully, lest he bring his full weight down in a bent ankle instead of the flat of his foot.
Rhys, for his part, was a good crutch, and like all good crutches, wooden or otherwise, remained silent. It allowed them to hightail it away from the church, whose interior alarms were still going off with the deafening volume of a pipe organ. But when they were about six blocks away, Methos steered them deliberately to an alleyway so that he could lean against something that was not propelling him forward. He let go of Rhys's shoulder and crashed chest first into a brick wall, gripping the grooves of the mortar with his fingertips.
When he was sufficiently sure that he could stay upright, he turned around and braced his back against the wall, waving off Rhys's steadying hands.
Rhys bounced off a building with his shoulder and coughed. "Not that I'm all about talking about feelings, but what the hell was that all about?"
Methos shrugged. If he had known that the night had been leading to, well, *that,* he most certainly would never had boarded the plane.
"I dunno," was what he decided to say. His tongue still didn't like the "t" sound. "Seemed like th' righ' thin' da do." His chest twitched with a muscular contraction and he winced. "A' th' momen'. Y'know."
He wanted to check the time, but he was pretty sure that his watch had stopped, like it always did. He made a mental note to switch back to a wind up instead of those cheap battery deals. The blood on his shirt was tacky and sticking to his chest.
"Was that a jumpstart?" Rhys said, his voice almost coy. Definitely amused.
Methos smiled at the graffiti on the opposite wall, which assured him that if he called Miranda's "moms," he'd have a great time. He also considered the warning below it that said she had "gonnereah."
He wasn't sure what to say to Rhys. That he had needed something from him? That Rhys had needed something from him? That Death's greatest companion was the one who mastered him? That led to places he didn't want to go. Or maybe just to places he said he didn't want to go. And now everything was horribly circular.
"Vroom, vroom," was what he decided.
Rhys laughed, and then, without warning, pressed him into the alley wall. One hand went to Methos's shoulder, the other to the healed wound on his chest. Rhys stuck his knee between Methos's two. It shouldn't have been immobilizing. What was frightening was that it was effective.
"And here, all these years, I had thought you harbored ambitions to the Queen's bed," Rhys said in a low voice. His eyepatch was askew, and Methos could see the scars that ripped across the perfect flesh of the eye. He was hyper aware of the proximity of those full lips to his, of how much that scar reminded him of another one just like it, if a little less severe.
Instead he took a breath. "I wouldn't survive a night in her bed," he murmured.
It was Rhys's turn to laugh, a tight chuckle that sounded like a cough. If his throat was as constricted as Methos's he didn't show it. "Oh I know you would. Your is a hearty race, Immortal." One of his hands reached up and caressed the curve of Methos's jaw before settling on his neck, not squeezing, just simply placing it over the area of death, as if saying, 'I know your secret.'
"I was never interested in her bed," Methos finally said, trying not to say what he might have said if this had been any one else, if he had been drunker, if this had been a poorly written romantic summer blockbuster.
Because this wasn't about romance, not in the least. "Of course not," Rhys whispered in his ear, his hand still resting on Methos's throat, his other hand somewhere in the vicinity of Methos's cock, but not really there for anything sexual. Rhys didn't swing that way, not really, all bourbon aside.
It occurred to him that there was something wrong in the way Rhys looked at him, and not literally in the ha-ha funny sans-depth-perception way.
"I had never thought you'd be sidhe-struck," Rhys whispered in his ear, his face so close that Methos could smell his breath, alcoholic and heady. He closed his eyes when Rhys pressed his cheek to his and licked the shell of his ear. "Of all the creatures on this earth, Lord Death."
Methos pulled away enough to tilt his head back, opening his eyes into the misting rain that had begun to fall moments earlier. Steam rose from the dumpster across from them. "I'm not," he tried to say, but his voice wasn't as strong as he had meant it to be, and therefore undermined the veracity of that statement.
He didn't want to admit that he'd unloaded a round into his own chest because of it. That what he'd done had been the only worthy gift he could think of to offer.
Rhys tightened his grip on Methos's throat and moved forward, wedging one knee between both of his, and it was all he could do not to move into the man. This wasn't what they should be doing, no matter how much it seemed like a good idea. Rhys would hate him for it later, but now, oh now, he was all silver and blue and filled with the ghosts of dead things, drawn to Methos and the memory of all the death he had brought to him in the past.
The rain grew heavier and he heard thunder in the distance. Rhys's hair was plastered to his head in chunky waves. His one cornflower eye seemed to pinwheel with shades of blue.
"And then what should I call you, then eh?" he whispered, face dead serious, all humor lost, swallowed. "An indiscretion in the night?" His skin wasn't glowing, and it would never glow for Methos, he knew, but it was still luminescent in the moonlight and the rain, just enough yellow streetlight to offset the whiteness with incandescence. Methos felt the hand tighten around his throat and click things in his spine in ways he hadn't remembered. He almost came right then and there.
Instead, he ventured a hand inside the waistband of Rhys's jeans, undoing the buttons and finding the man's cock soft and already quite slick with come. He made a noise in his throat that was supposed to cover wry amusement, but actually sounded like the muted bark of an elephant seal.
"Yeah, you already went there," Rhys told him, his tongue tracing the corner of his lower jaw. "Well, in spirit anyway."
"Rather takes the fun out of it," he mumbled, mostly to himself.
Rhys made a noise that he decided was agreement before running his lips over Methos's and reaching a hand down to undo the buttons of his jeans. Methos wondered if he'd have to rewire his sexual meter, since he'd never in a million years have guessed that Rhys's hand would go, well, *there,* but there it was, fumbling its way past the elastic of his shorts and curling abut him as if he gave hand jobs every day. Or maybe he just needed to reconsider that Rhys lived in a house full of men, or that years of enforced celibacy had made him more flexible, or that-
"Oh," he groaned to the air, "I don't really care."
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Rhys hadn't yet been inside the house when Kitto found him out by the pool at dawn. It had taken him at least an hour to find the car, which hadn't been towed, but instead was right where he had left it. Not that he was capable of recalling where the car was, or where he was after the night's events, but he was acutely aware of his soiled clothing, and even more acutely aware of his need to go home.
He left Methos in the alleyway, leaning against the side of the dumpster ("You go. I'm completely kosher," he'd said. "Let's do this again in another thousand years."), after a few bumbling post coital attempts at cleaning themselves up with cocktail napkins scrounged from coat pockets and a few half hearted sentiments ("You know that is the closest I've ever come to saying thank you," Rhys had mumbled. Methos had chuckled. "Well, then, I'm honored.").
When he had gotten home, he'd pretty much decided not to think too much about the night and instead procured a six pack from an all night convenience store that didn't mind bending the law for a few faded twenties. Then he'd stripped down and spent the early hours of the morning in the cold jacuzzi. He hadn't even noticed Kitto for the first few seconds.
"Everyone else likes the water hot," Kitto said quietly. Rhys might have jumped, but he'd smelled Kitto seconds before he'd spoken. It was a subtle smell, like the dry sin of a snake. He wasn't worried about Kitto, not anymore. He was worried that something had followed him home from the Church. That used to happen before-well, before.
"I turned it on," he said into his third bottle. "But it isn't working."
Kitto's fingertips skimmed the surface of the water. "It is. You're too cold for it to work."
Rhys slipped the eyepatch off his face and tossed it out into the water. He'd known this. It was some new thing of his, probably. He had never remembered his power being this cold before; this was something he had thought would be more in Frost's line of ability.
"They missed you last night," Kitto said, still crouched down, fingers dangling in the water.
Rhys laughed. "No they didn't." He held out an unopened bottle of beer.
Kitto's lips quirked up on one side, and for a minute he looked normal. "No, they didn't."
He had nothing to say to that. Instead, he slid further down in the water and recalled the image of Methos dead in the Church. Something in that image was comforting, hopefully because he knew that Methos would revive, and therein lay the whole temptation; Methos wouldn't die no matter how many times he was killed, something Rhys's power didn't understand but loved. Spending time with the Immortal was like being suspended in time, or in a place or state of being in which there were no consequences for one's actions. But Methos wasn't any ordinary dead spirit, but something that was so layered from all of his accumulated quickenings that it manifested in death as its own cognitive force.
Huh.
Kitto took the bottle from him with an apprehensive look. He slid in the water opposite Rhys and sighed, his limbs seeming to unfold. He was deceptively longer than he seemed. Kitto clipped the bottle cap off with his teeth and spit it off into the darkness.
"You know," he said after a long sip, "I think the water's getting warmer."
*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*
Methos tucked the iPod into his sleeve with his finger on the volume dial and closed his eyes. He liked to listen to it with one finger managing the volume, turning it up and down with the slide of his skin. The phenomenon of touch sensitive technology had delighted him ever since it had been created; it made him feel as if something in this world could tune into his very life pulse and reflect what was there.
Duncan brushed his arm; he opened his eyes long enough to see the other man's profile disappear when he turned away from him. The flight attendant had brought them both scotches in flimsy plastic imitation old fashion glasses that shook a little in the turbulence. Duncan's hand grasped the cup and held it, and Methos watched the movement.
His own cup slid on the tabletop, the amber liquid sliding along the insides of the plastic like a trapped sea. It was in this moment that he understood something that age, and Rhys, had taught him. He didn't grasp the cup to keep it upright, but trusted that it would stay put. Perhaps it was because he was lazy, or maybe he didn't care about a bit of alcohol. It wasn't optimism or laziness, really, but almost a resignation about the nature of things and the capabilities of man that the centuries had given him. It was this that made Rhys's hand slide over the muscles of his stomach when he reached for his weapon or tilt up on two legs in a dark dank bar. A hesitation without carelessness, a carelessness without hesitation.
It was this knowledge about the unfolding of events that had pressed Rhys into Andais's service in the first place, and perhaps it was the reason he had put away his own mask of death, tossing it out into the sea so easily. Even more it was this understanding that drew him to Rhys, to see if this other man was as filled with regret as he was. And what he had learned was even more unsettling.
The past was something that he couldn't recapture, and Methos was well aware of that; but the past being gone was rarely something that he ever regretted. He never should miss the things that he did, and yet, there it was, so heavy in his hand that he couldn't even seem to lift it to still the cup on the tray in front of him, a sorrow that he had no words for because what he missed was so awful he could never speak of it.
When Duncan's shoulder touched his, the vibration from the other man through Methos meant that he was speaking. He used his finger to turn down the hidden iPod. "Pardon?" he mumbled, slouching further down in his seat and trying not to watch the sunlight slide back and forth in the crack of the closed window shade.
"I was wondering how your meeting with the sidhe went," Duncan said lightly. "And you're about to lose your drink."
Methos caught the cup as it was about to tip and raised it to his mouth. "Got it. No worries."
"For both, or just the scotch?"
Methos looked at him out of the corner of his eye. Duncan's face was earnest as always. The question was invasive, or perhaps spending time with Rhys had made him revert a bit back to a further time. Maybe it was the guy still rolling around inside him like yesterday's bad egg salad.
"You ask too many questions," he said jovially. It was just chipper enough that he knew Duncan would have to think before replying. He wasn't going to answer anyway. Instead he turned up the volume and concentrated on the sliver of light trying desperately to invade the plane.
What about everything?
What about aeroplanes and what about ships that drank the sea?
What about the moon and stars? What about soldier battle scars
And all the anger that they eat?
I am not in need.
END