Happy Holidays, tazlet!
Title: Winter Gifts
Author: Eggnog Anonymous
Written for: tazlet
Characters/Pairings: Duncan/Methos/Amanda
Genre: Slash/poly
Rating: R
Wordcount: 6,000
Summary: "The Contents of someone's bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait." -- Anatole Broyard
The first book arrived with a pile of birthday gifts. A large pile of birthday gifts. The mail carrier brought them from her truck in a handcart. "Happy birthday!" She grinned at Duncan, holding up a long, thin box wrapped in electric blue, with stickers across the bottom spelling out "Big Birthday Boy." Duncan took it with an outward smile and an inward groan.
"Thank you," Duncan said. "Not that I care to count."
"Well, count yourself lucky, at least." The mail carrier handed him a pile of cards. "You have friends who care."
Duncan smiled. "One or two."
"Crowds of 'em, looks like," she continued cheerfully moving boxes from her handcart to a stack on the floor. "Or are some of these for Christmas?"
"One of my friends loves to shop," Duncan said wryly, imagining Amanda shopping her way across... he picked up a package at random. Europe. "You'll be doing this again in a week or so."
She grinned. "I'll have to get a bigger truck."
Later, Amanda's gifts were strewn across the loft; on the couch, on the kitchen bar, on the floor, followed by a smaller trail of cards from some of his more restrained friends. There was one package left. Duncan turned it in his hands. It was a heavy box, sturdy, rectangular, flat -- book shaped. Plainly wrapped. No return address. A San Francisco postmark. He opened the box and inside was another careful layer of packaging. Duncan tore it away.
"Oh..." He stared at the book in his hands for a long time. An expensive book, when it had been published. More expensive now, in this condition. He winced inwardly, remembering the condition of the last copy he'd held. There'd been a fit of jealousy (his), a thrown book (this one), a splayed and broken spine (the book's).
Not a broken spine, but a small card caused it to open in his hands now; to the same page, the same plate, that had made him so furious. Duncan couldn't help but search out the face of the minor demon in the famous fresco, painted so long ago and so far from Seacouver, that had made him jealous of a man so long dead.
There was nothing written on the card, no inscription in the book, no hint of who had sent it. But Duncan knew it was: the minor demon himself. Methos.
He ran his fingers over the glossy surface of the plate, remembering. The original book, and Methos, had gone from his life. Years ago. He could probably, he thought grimly, count down to the day how long Methos had been gone, but he couldn't remember when he'd started to leave. There hadn't been a blow-up, a big argument, an angry spitting and snarling of farewells. The fight over this bit of Methos's history didn't even figure into it.
Or had it, after all? Duncan's anger had been just one of too many small parries that nicked Methos's "just a guy" armor. Duncan couldn't be jealous of what Methos called his forty-six century head start on getting the most nookie. That would be absurd; insane. But the man who had taken Methos's likeness and put it in the form of a demon was -- who he was. Michelangelo, for Christ's sake. A name that reverberated down through the centuries. A legend. Methos's association with the great artist, slight as he claimed it to be, transformed him from someone who could look Duncan in the eye as a man and a lover to something Duncan could barely see. A myth.
Duncan closed the book. It had been a long, slow parting. One gray morning, Methos was no longer there.
------
The next day's mail brought more packages and cards. After the mail carrier had cheerfully wished him happy birthday (again) and whistled her way out the door, Duncan wrangled the packages up to the loft and applied box cutter, scissors and letter-knife to them. One thing about Amanda, he thought, weighing a very good reproduction Italian Renaissance cameo in the palm of his hand: she knew how to pick out gifts. Of course, her gifts tended to be self-serving; the profile in the cameo was hers. And some of her other gifts were obviously meant for sharing. He smiled to himself as he stowed them away in the drawers next to his bed.
He placed the cameo on a shelf and picked up the cards, shuffling through them.
His hand stilled. Among the square envelopes and bright cards was a vintage postcard of the Eiffel tower towering over the Paris streets, hand-tinted in those improbable blues and greens and pinks popular (or easy to mass produce) in the early 20th century. He stared at it, ambushed by memory, all the carefully set locks and safeguards around his heart banished in an instant by an old scrap of paper. His hand shaking a little, he turned it over.
A short message. Typed, on a typewriter, and from the way some of the letters were faded, and others seemed to leap from the baseline, Duncan guessed it was typed on an old manual typewriter with a well-used ribbon. There was no signature.
"Time is the longest distance between two places." - Tennessee Williams
It had been a long time since Duncan had seen Paris. After Methos had gone, Duncan had been restless. He'd thought solitude was what he needed, so he'd gone to the Island. Once there, he found he yearned for cityscapes, so traveled to Tokyo, throwing himself into the bustle and noise of humanity. He'd wandered, as if lost, through the familiar landscapes of France, avoiding Paris, where the ghosts crowded in too closely, and had returned, finally, to Seacouver, where he was content to be alone among crowds.
His building had been closed up for years. Not that many, the way his kind reckoned time, but long enough for the place look abandoned, derelict. And full of ghosts.
Duncan cleaned the dojo from top to bottom, as a sort of penance, though he couldn't have said for what. He stripped the place to the walls, painted, refinished the floor, installed shiny modern equipment. He had planned to open it again for business. But not yet.
The loft was as he had left it, under dust sheets and plastic. Dust and cobwebs on top of that. Blinds closed and the light shuttered. Duncan opened it all to the sun and air. He went around the loft pulling off sheets, letting ghosts escape.
And ghosts had stayed, part of the familiar furnishings. They appeared now, jumbled memories. Paris and Seacouver. Methos drawing his sword under the bridge. Methos sprawled on the couch. Amanda waiting for him at the bottom of the Eiffel Tower. Amanda in the lift with Anne. Richie stalking up and down the dojo with the impatience of the young. Joe leaning on his canes. Others: Connor, Fitz, Claudia, Kit O'Grady… crowding close but so terribly far away. Some of them were gone, real ghosts. Gone from his life and gone from the world.
Duncan caught himself up. Methos and Amanda weren't ghosts. They weren't gone from his life. The blizzard of gifts strewn over the loft was proof of that. Solstice gifts from Amanda. A cryptic message from Methos. A book Duncan wasn't sure was a gift. The two of them seemed to be circling him, at least via the post.
Duncan slid the postcard under Amanda's cameo and picked up an armload of packaging. He worked steadily to clear the loft, to put away the gifts and cards, not thinking, waiting for the familiar numbness to take over, for the locks to his heart to click back in place.
-----------
Over the next few days, the mail carrier brought more packages, most of them birthday gifts, and so many of them from Amanda that he checked his credit card balances. Duncan didn't know he'd been looking out for another anonymous box until the mail carrier handed him a small, light package. His heart skipped when he saw there was no return address. He had it open before he entered the lift. A book.
Duncan smiled, feeling suddenly light. Apicius. The pages Methos hung out to dry in the basement of Shakespeare and Company. The famous lentil and chestnuts recipe. The famous dish that looked like tar, and at least the way Methos had made it, tasted like it. The recipe with the hard to get ingredients.
Methos had arrived home with a bag full of groceries. "I'm making dinner," he said. "Special treat. A recipe straight from the ancient master himself."
"Brillat-Savarin?" Duncan said.
"I said ancient, MacLeod."
"Confucius?"
"Nope."
"Archestratus?"
"Closer."
"Apicius."
"Got it in three. You're getting rusty."
"I usually go to Pepin these days," Duncan said.
"Pepin?" Methos scoffed. "The man is on television four times a day."
Duncan shrugged. "What are you making?" he poked into the bag.
Methos slapped his hands away. He pulled out a packet.
"Lentils. Oh good," Duncan said.
"You like lentils."
"I love lentils," Duncan said. "Not with chestnuts," he amended, as Methos pulled out another bag.
"You'll love this, just wait."
"Not going by the smell of that stuff, I won't. What the hell is it?"
"It's asafoetida. It'll be fine; it's less vile when it's cooked.
"Mm hm. Less vile. Sounds appetizing. And Apicius calls for this stuff?
"Actually, no. I'm using it because laser root is a bit hard to get."
Duncan moved the smelly stuff farther down the counter. "So why don't you wait on this until you can find some laser root? It has to be better than this. Let me check online."
"You won't find any," Methos said, dumping the lentils into a big pot.
"Why not?"
"Because it's extinct."
Duncan looked at him. "Extinct. Right. That would make it a bit hard to get."
"Yep. Now shoo. I've got work to do here."
Duncan held up a bottle. "Can I open this?"
"As long as you get out of my hair," Methos said, making shooing motions. Duncan moved to the other side of counter and applied a corkscrew to the bottle. "How long will this take?"
"About an hour," Methos said confidently.
But two hours later they contemplated the dark, sticky mess that spread over the plate, Methos glumly and Duncan with hungry curiosity.
"Is it supposed to look like that?" Duncan said.
"Yes."
"Then what's wrong?"
Methos wordlessly handed him a spoon.
Duncan hesitated, then scooped up a small portion. He blew on it a bit, then gingerly tasted it. He chewed. He swallowed. He washed it down with a large gulp of wine. "Ah."
"Ah," Methos agreed.
"Maybe if you used -"
"I tried that."
"Or added some -"
"Tried that, too."
"How do you know what I'm going to say?"
"Because I've tried everything. No go." He shrugged. "Things change. Extinction happens. I can't make a pie out of passenger pigeons either - not that I'd want to. Tough birds, as I remember." He brightened. "Maybe laser root can be revived. They're doing wonderful things with old DNA these days. Oh well. Back to the drawing board."
"Passenger pigeons?" Duncan said faintly as Methos took away the plate of failed Lentils and Chestnuts a la Apicius. "Why don't we just go out?"
But Methos had his nose in the cookbook. "How about sea anemone?"
"How about we call out for pizza?" Duncan said, reaching for the phone.
Duncan took the book to the kitchen counter, opened a bottle of wine, and settled down to read.
----------
As Duncan had promised the mail carrier, the Christmas packages began to arrive. Duncan dragged a narrow table near the entrance to the dojo, and the mail carrier cheerfully stacked his mail there every day.
"I'm guessing you have a large family," she said, handing him a postcard.
Duncan smiled. "Good guess."
Another postcard of the Eiffel Tower. Methos must have found a box of them at an antique store somewhere. The address was typed, on the elderly typewriter. The message was in an elegant, spiky script. Duncan frowned. His Persian was rusty, but he puzzled it out.
Until the juice ferments a while in the cask,
it isn't wine. If you wish your heart to be bright,
you must do a little work.
--Rumi
Methos again. It had to be. Do a little work? What did that mean? His heart was bright. He was fine. He had work to do, good work. It was enough. He was content to be alone, for once, for a while. It was quiet (his glance fell on the cardboard and bubble wrap strewn across his floor) it was quiet except for the daily intake from the post. There, that was proof he wasn't friendless, even if he was, at the moment, alone. Technically. He could talk to people every day, and did so -- tomorrow he was playing Santa to a crowd of children. He was fine. His heart was bright enough. If Methos wanted his heart to be brighter he could damn well show up at his door. Damn the man.
Another book had come as well. Duncan frowned at it. A small book with a brown cover, the title stamped in gilt and black with an illustration of a scythe leaning on a sheaf of wheat. Duncan opened it carefully; the cover was worn and the hinges were loose, which seemed appropriate. This was a book meant to molder and decay on some forgotten bookshelf, and not, according to a flowery inscription on the flyleaf, to be given as a Christmas present to someone in 1888.
Or this year, for that matter.
Duncan paged to the first stanza:
Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
Like a swift fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,
A flash of lightning, a break of the wave,
Man passeth from life to his rest in the grave.
"Idiot," Duncan said aloud. He could see a scribbled "im" before the word "mortal" as if Methos had actually physically written it there. Lightning, right. "Very funny."
Duncan flipped through the dismal stanzas with their equally dismal drawings illustrating the futility of pride in the face of the inevitable. Death, doom, despair. The poem was… the poem was hilarious, in a horrible sort of way, a cheap-seats version of "Ozymandias," (William Knox was no Percy Shelley). But Methos had to know it was more. Between the lines of the old poem, Duncan could hear wailing, and gunfire; smell the stench of the battlefields and see the ragged fear on the black faces as they fled north, always north. It had been Abraham Lincoln's favorite poem.
A cheerful man, Abe.
"Why are you doing this, old man?" Duncan said. He put the book down and poured himself a glass of scotch. The soldiers, the fleeing slaves, the people barricaded in their plantation mansions and huddled in the cabins, every soul Duncan knew, the men he killed, the people he tried to save, Knox, the Great Emancipator himself, all were long dead. Duncan glanced at the name on the Christmas inscription. Even poor Esther was long in her grave. Duncan imagined her as a young woman who'd received the book politely, and with an inward sense of humor.
Duncan laid the book on the table, scowling at it. When "a flash of lightning" came to him, this smug and grim little book would probably outlive him too. Unless - and this was a bleak thought that sometimes came to Duncan in the early grey hours before dawn - unless he lived on, and lived on, past the memory of this book, past libraries, past cities; lived on past the last, cold, huddling remnant of humanity; lived on in a dead and empty world, he and one other, circling each other, together or on opposite sides of the world, waiting for something, a gathering of two, one last bloodthirsty craving for the lightning in their veins. There can be only one, and what then?
"Thanks a lot, friend," Duncan said. He pitched the book towards the fireplace and poured another glass of scotch.
------------
The mail carrier cheerfully handed over the latest package. Small, lightweight, thinly wrapped, just a piece of cardboard and tyvek envelope. Duncan slit the tyvek and pulled out the book. New, unread. Don Quixote. An annotated version, thank you very much. Did he think Duncan needed explication for Quixote? What was Methos's point? A not so subtle dig at Duncan, tilting at windmills and rescuing damsels in distress? A general comment on the impossibility of being a hero? A reference to Methos himself, born long before the age of chivalry?
Duncan stood by the window paging through the book at random, caught by a phrase here that resonated, a word there that started memories clanging through his head. Finally he shook himself and put the book down, went about the tasks of the day. But he remembered the book when he went up to the loft later than night, and it was beside his plate as he sat down to his dinner. He didn't know what Methos had meant by sending him the book, but he spent a very enjoyable evening lost in it.
The next day, on an early morning run to clear his mind of windmills and swordfights and good deeds that went so badly wrong they'd given him nightmares, Duncan considered. Of course sending the book was a dig at him. "Quixote and Panza = Duncan and Methos" was written all over it. But it was a friendly dig. Methos knew Duncan wasn't as clueless as the hapless Don Quixote, and no doubt imagined himself far more intelligent than Sancho Panza. Duncan smiled. And everything else considered, it was a good story. Duncan ran on through the morning, his spirits strangely lifted by a book that seemed to reach across the centuries to mock him personally.
That afternoon brought a postcard, on the familiar vintage postcard of the Eiffel Tower.
"For neither good nor evil can last forever; and so it follows that as evil has lasted a long time, good must now be close at hand." -- Miguel de Cervantes
"What is this, a clue? Cliff's notes, in case I don't get it?" Duncan flipped the postcard onto the pile with the others. "It's nonsense! Of course good and evil can last forever -- it always has. Evil can last a long time, with nothing around the corner but more evil! If anyone should know that, it's you." He raised his hands in exasperation at the insufferable man who wasn't there.
"Unreliable narrator, Methos!"
It was an old argument of theirs, Duncan arguing for a basic underlying good, Methos arguing that "people are scum, at bottom." Duncan stubbornly laying out the case of going to the aid of those in need, Methos obstinately making the counter-argument to let well enough alone, it'll all work out in the end and interfering will just make it worse.
Duncan stalked from the couch to the window. "And -- listen to me talk -- I've come around to your dismal point of view, are you happy?" He paced from the window to the couch. "So what's this? You change your mind and turn into an optimist? Pah!" Fuming, he turned again to the window. Not enough room to pace here, and the bookshelves seemed to mock him. He stormed out of the loft, clattered down the stairs and stalked the length of the empty dojo. More room to pace here, and things to punch. But something about the loft got on his nerves, too; some weird wrongness. He swore to himself, grabbed his coat and left. It was only when he'd walked furiously for several blocks that he realized that he had half expected Methos to be waiting for him down in the dojo to carry on their argument.
"So I can stop talking to myself, that's all," he said aloud, making a small dog bark. If Methos was trying to get under his skin with this -- bookish stalking, it was not going to--. Duncan stopped. If Methos was trying to get under his skin it was working. He sighed and turned around. He had to get back to his book. He'd left Quixote and Sancho Panza trapped in a cage on an oxcart.
It was only later that he realized that perhaps Methos meant it more literally, that something good was coming. "close at hand. Was he nearby?
He was really getting under Duncan's skin.
-----------
Duncan was waiting for the mail carrier when she came, but there were no packages, which rather depressed them both. But as he walked to the lift, a postcard with the familiar view of the Eiffel Tower fell out of a stack of bills. Duncan turned it over.
A long quote, a tiny story. The words were crammed into the message side of the postcard, and spread over to the bottom of the address side, the lines of type so close together it looked more like an abstract piece of word art.
THE RIGHT SORT OF FROG
Many anecdotes have already been recounted bearing on Chapman's conviction that there was easy money in performing animals and the art of the circus. On one occasion he took to training frogs in amphibious ballet but made little progress owing to the diversity of the frogs he caught in size, shape and intelligence. He noticed, however, that it was comparatively easy to frogmarch the small butty type of frogs and commenced breeding this strain.
'I intend to persevere as I am bound to have luck sooner or later,' he remarked to Keats. 'I find it is quite possible to impart knowledge provided one can get the right sort of frog.'
'It's a wrong toad that has no learning,' Keats said.
--Flann O'Brien
For a moment, Duncan was perplexed. Keats? Chapman? A poet and a translator of Homer. Stout Cortez on a peak in Darien, blah blah blah. Duncan was pretty sure a frog didn't enter into it. Who was Flann -- oh, right. Methos would be a fan. Naturally. He rubbed his forehead. A sudden headache bloomed between his eyes. Methos and his terrible jokes. Jokes and tall tales. He'd had centuries of practice telling both. "Sincerity is the hardest thing to fake," he said more than once, "but once you've got that down you've got it made."
He found his perfect foil in Joe Dawson. Joe wasn't naive, but he loved history. He'd made a friend who had been around for most of it, and he just couldn't help himself. So there was that delicious moment -- even Duncan savored it -- just before he groaned and promised to do Methos some serious mayhem, when Joe bought whatever wild story Methos was telling hook, line and sinker.
Amanda was as bad as Methos. She loved to egg him on, inspiring him to tales that would make the good Baron von Munchhausen blush. And then Duncan would join the fray. He just couldn't sit on his hands and listen while Methos claimed he'd invented publishing, taught Galileo to build a telescope or brought fire to humankind. He'd do his best to derail Methos's story with the real, if mundane, facts. But his two friends danced around him effortlessly, turning him into an unwilling straight man. Dawson would watch the whole thing like someone at a tennis match, his head snapping back and forth, trying to separate the fact from the fiction. But in the end, he was always drawn into the story, the drama, the possibility of an eyewitness account. Because he wanted to believe.
"Michelangelo loved nothing better than a banquet, as long as it included a ham," Methos began.
"No he didn't," Duncan said. "Not even if the ham was you."
"Let him tell it," Amanda said. She cupped her chin in her hand. "Do go on, Methos."
"You want to hear this?" Duncan said unbelievingly.
"Certainly," Amanda said. "I want to know what the competition was up to."
"Competition?" Duncan's eyebrows lowered.
"Michelangelo and I had a -- thing," she said. "I called him Micky," she said, fluttering her eyelashes.
"You did no such thing," Duncan said. He rounded on Methos. "Did you call him Micky?" he demanded.
"I tended to call him Monsignor," Methos said. "But of course I didn't have the charm of a young… lady."
Amanda made an unladylike noise.
"Both of you knew Michelangelo?" Joe said.
Methos and Amanda turned identically sincere faces towards him. Duncan gritted his teeth.
"And you both," Joe coughed. "Were --"
"Intimate?" Amanda breathed. "Oh yes. Well, that is, I was. I don't know about Methos. But our Micky did have a thing for street urchins, if they were beautiful enough."
"He was quite taken with a street urchin with a prodigious nose." Methos gave them all the benefit of the prodigious nose in profe.
"He liked the way you farted," Duncan said.
Heads swiveled in his direction.
Duncan smiled.
Methos opened his mouth.
"That was the story you told before," Duncan said evenly.
Methos shut his mouth again.
Joe set down his beer with a clunk. He shook his head. "Just a guy, that Michelangelo."
Duncan grinned and drank from his glass.
"Am I missing something?" Amanda said.
Duncan leaned over, all eager anticipation. "Tell us all about Micky."
------
Duncan still went to Joe's Bar, sometimes. He figured he'd keep going as long as Joe's name was out front in neon. Joe was even there, sometimes, looking good. Looking older. But he'd retired years ago. There was a younger man behind the bar, a group of younger bluesmen on the stage, new regulars, all strangers to Duncan. He hasn't really made any effort to get to know any of them. Maybe he should.
----------
The books began to pile up, and the haphazard stack beside the couch began to bother Duncan. It felt temporary, makeshift, part of his place but not part of his home. Like Methos himself, at least at the beginning. Sleeping on the couch, living out of a backpack. Even after he'd started sleeping in Duncan's bed, Methos still lived in the loft too lightly. Duncan contemplated the stack of books, then eyed his bookshelves. He pulled a few books down, then a few more. By the time the setting sun was slanting through the windows, Duncan had arranged the books Methos sent him among the ones already there, Cervantes between Casanova and Chekov, Apicius with -- Duncan grinned -- Jacques Pepin. When he was done, there was nothing to distinguish the new arrivals from the old favorites. But Duncan knew exactly where each new book rested on each shelf.
Later, reading in is bed at midnight, he found his eyes drawn to the shelves, searching them out.
He sighed, put his book down, and turned off the light. But the books seemed to crowd and jostle his thoughts even more in the dark, so he turned it back on. It was a long time before he fell asleep.
---------------
The next day the mail carrier's eyebrows wagged knowingly as she handed him an Eiffel Tower postcard and a plain brown package. The plain brown wrapper was appropriate, Duncan thought, as it fell away to reveal a cover with a colorful faux Persian design. He set the book on the table and opened it out flat. A small paper orgy rose from the pages.
Methos had dragged Duncan and Amanda to a street fair to hear a three-man bad play an energetic mix of old-time music and punk (not to Duncan's taste, but they were clever; there'd been a song about living on Shit Creek). Idling through the stalls, they ate deep fried food on sticks and drank beer from paper cups. Duncan bought a few bottles of local wine, Amanda bought a long silk scarf, and Methos found a battered copy of the Pop-Up Kama Sutra.
He thought it was hilarious. Duncan rolled his eyes. Amanda laced the scarf through her fingers thoughtfully.
Back at the loft, feeling relaxed and happy, things went the way they often did, especially if they had wine, an impromptu sex toy, and a comic book version of an ancient sex manual.
Methos settled himself comfortably amongst the pillows on Duncan's bed. "And now, children, let me show you how the ancients did these things. Let us turn to page -- '69,' very funny, Amanda."
There aren't actually very many positions illustrated in the Pop-Up Kama Sutra; but they did what they could. They bent themselves into positions that were erotic, or uncomfortable, or both; stretched and turned and lifted and entwined legs and arms, laughing all the while. Amanda, unsurprisingly, was best at it, her slender, lithe second-story girl's body in top form. Methos would have been better at it if he hadn't been laughing at Duncan. Duncan wasn't good at it at all. The combination of sex and gymnastics drove him crazy. He was by turns aroused and exasperated.
"Just let me do this one," he said, pointing to the margins where a pair of pigs was going at it in the normal way that pigs do. "That's about my speed."
"Oh come on, MacLeod, be more adventurous. With your special skills, surely you can rig up something to hang Amanda from the ceiling."
"Hey!"
"Hm," Duncan said, looking at the illustration of a woman displayed on a pillow suspended from an elegant rope-and-pulley contraption. "Very decorative. And you'd be out of my hair, too."
Amanda leaned into him, "Out of your hair? Oh, no. I don't think you want me out of your hair, darling. I was about to do 'the pair of tongs'. Do you think he really wants me out of his hair, Methos?"
"Hang him from the ceiling," Methos said, pulling her towards him. "I'll take the 'pair of tongs'."
Duncan pulled her back. "The 'pair of tongs' is mine," he growled. She snuggled closer. "What's the 'pair of tongs'?"
Amanda showed him.
As for the postcard that had made the mail carrier wink:
"Are there sexual fetishes that involve books? There must be. I try not to imagine how they might work." --Robin Sloan
Duncan tapped the cover of the silly little pop-up book. "Like this," Duncan said firmly, to Sloan, to the absent Methos, to himself. He laid the postcard in the book and snapped it shut.
If he could, Duncan would send Methos a postcard.
Wish you were here.
----------
The book that arrived the following day was different from the others in three ways: it was a how-to book on home renovation that Duncan had never seen before, though yeah yeah, he got the joke; it was the last book Duncan would receive in the mail, though he didn't know it at the time; and it was a library book, due a week from today.
Duncan frowned, and examined the book carefully for clues. There were no bookmarks, sticky notes, or marginalia, no markings except SEACOUVER PUBLIC LIBRARY stamped in blue. He skimmed the text, got engrossed in a section on flooring, and shook himself. There was nothing notable about the book itself. Just the fact that it was a library book, and Duncan would have to return it.
The skin on the back of his neck prickled.
A few minutes on his laptop gave him a name and a helpful photo. Peter Adamson, Collections and Acquisitions.
Duncan grabbed his coat, left the dojo and walked toward the city center. To the library.
The new Seacouver public library was an impressive building, its circular, colonnaded wall giving a creditable imitation of the Colosseum. Inside it looked more like a small city in a science fiction movie. Duncan made his way to the center of the structure, a more traditionally library-shaped box that contained the stacks themselves. Ignoring signs directing him to book-return kiosks, he found the office number he wanted on a wall-sized directory and headed for the elevators.
The elevator door opened on a wide space lined with glass-fronted offices. He knew Methos's
office without looking at the number. Everything was on the floor. So was he.
"Methos," Duncan said. He clutched the home improvement book to his chest like a shield. His heart was pounding.
Methos looked up and smiled.
"Sorry I don't have a beer to offer you. Here. Mineral water."
Duncan caught it in one hand, still clutching his book.
Methos rose to his feet in one graceful motion. He tapped at Duncan's book. "Have you found my gifts -- of use?"
"You're an idiot," Duncan said. But he couldn't help smiling.
"Ah, I see that they have. Which is your favorite?"
"What do you think?"
"Hm. It's rather a toss-up, isn't it? Cervantes or -- Knox."
"Knox, right. The Pop-Up Kama Sutra was a nice touch."
"You liked that, did you? Too bad my lunch break is so short."
Duncan grinned. Methos grinned. They stood grinning at each other.
Duncan's face felt tight. He took a breath and said the words he and Amanda always used when they met after a long time apart. "Are you… free?"
Methos grin softened. "As a bird, Duncan."
-----------
Duncan marveled that it had been that easy, after all. Methos's little literary puzzle had been a map, a beacon drawing him to where Methos was hiding in plain sight: in the largest concentration of books on the Northwest continent. It figured.
It was tentative, at first. They talked. They sketched their dealings with other immortals, in the game or out. Challenges declined (or avoided), challenges accepted and obviously, won. Friends in far-flung places.
"Where in the world is Amanda Devereux," Methos murmured.
Duncan looked at him sharply. "On her way, here, I think." The use-by date of some of her gifts weren't far in the future.
Methos smiled.
Duncan wasn't surprised that Methos wasn't surprised that Amanda was coming to Seacouver. "She might be at the loft by now."
"No, she'll be here," Methos pulled out his phone and thumbed through the tiny screens, "Thursday."
Duncan threw up his hands. "In cahoots. I knew it."
Methos looked at him innocently. "Nothing so conspiratorial," he said. "We've been … in communication."
"Hah. You know she's been sending me a king's ransom in winter gifts? Softening me up, with her little favors and her -- her toys." Methos blushed a little, and Duncan wondered whether they had been 'in communication' about some of the raunchier toys. He'd find out later. "While you," he said, stabbing a finger at Methos's chest, "aim for the heart."
"Not for the heart, MacLeod," Methos said mildly. "Just a few warning shots to wake you up."
Duncan grimaced. "Some of them landed pretty close to home," he said.
"Good," Methos said.
Later, much later, after a lunch break that turned into the rest of the afternoon, and a few beers that turned into sex on the couch ("This is nostalgic, but there's a perfectly good bed three feet away." "Humor me.") and a very late dinner (takeout pizza), Duncan pulled a book from the shelves and dropped it on Methos's chest (where he was sprawled, back on the couch).
"Oof. What is this?"
"A gift."
Methos turned the book over.
And laughed and laughed.
--End
-------------------------------
Books referenced
Unknown art book, I don't know, you'll have to ask Tazlet
Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
Marcus Gavius Apicius, De Re Coquinaria
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, "Be Lost in the Call"
William Knox, Oh, Why Should the Spirit of Mortal be Proud?
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
Flann O'Brien, The Various Lives of Keats and Chapman
Johnathan Biggs and Bob Robinson, The Pop-Up Kama Sutra
Robin Sloan, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
Better Homes & Gardens New Complete Guide to Home Repair and Improvement or similar
Your guess is as good as mine.
Author: Eggnog Anonymous
Written for: tazlet
Characters/Pairings: Duncan/Methos/Amanda
Genre: Slash/poly
Rating: R
Wordcount: 6,000
Summary: "The Contents of someone's bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait." -- Anatole Broyard
The first book arrived with a pile of birthday gifts. A large pile of birthday gifts. The mail carrier brought them from her truck in a handcart. "Happy birthday!" She grinned at Duncan, holding up a long, thin box wrapped in electric blue, with stickers across the bottom spelling out "Big Birthday Boy." Duncan took it with an outward smile and an inward groan.
"Thank you," Duncan said. "Not that I care to count."
"Well, count yourself lucky, at least." The mail carrier handed him a pile of cards. "You have friends who care."
Duncan smiled. "One or two."
"Crowds of 'em, looks like," she continued cheerfully moving boxes from her handcart to a stack on the floor. "Or are some of these for Christmas?"
"One of my friends loves to shop," Duncan said wryly, imagining Amanda shopping her way across... he picked up a package at random. Europe. "You'll be doing this again in a week or so."
She grinned. "I'll have to get a bigger truck."
Later, Amanda's gifts were strewn across the loft; on the couch, on the kitchen bar, on the floor, followed by a smaller trail of cards from some of his more restrained friends. There was one package left. Duncan turned it in his hands. It was a heavy box, sturdy, rectangular, flat -- book shaped. Plainly wrapped. No return address. A San Francisco postmark. He opened the box and inside was another careful layer of packaging. Duncan tore it away.
"Oh..." He stared at the book in his hands for a long time. An expensive book, when it had been published. More expensive now, in this condition. He winced inwardly, remembering the condition of the last copy he'd held. There'd been a fit of jealousy (his), a thrown book (this one), a splayed and broken spine (the book's).
Not a broken spine, but a small card caused it to open in his hands now; to the same page, the same plate, that had made him so furious. Duncan couldn't help but search out the face of the minor demon in the famous fresco, painted so long ago and so far from Seacouver, that had made him jealous of a man so long dead.
There was nothing written on the card, no inscription in the book, no hint of who had sent it. But Duncan knew it was: the minor demon himself. Methos.
He ran his fingers over the glossy surface of the plate, remembering. The original book, and Methos, had gone from his life. Years ago. He could probably, he thought grimly, count down to the day how long Methos had been gone, but he couldn't remember when he'd started to leave. There hadn't been a blow-up, a big argument, an angry spitting and snarling of farewells. The fight over this bit of Methos's history didn't even figure into it.
Or had it, after all? Duncan's anger had been just one of too many small parries that nicked Methos's "just a guy" armor. Duncan couldn't be jealous of what Methos called his forty-six century head start on getting the most nookie. That would be absurd; insane. But the man who had taken Methos's likeness and put it in the form of a demon was -- who he was. Michelangelo, for Christ's sake. A name that reverberated down through the centuries. A legend. Methos's association with the great artist, slight as he claimed it to be, transformed him from someone who could look Duncan in the eye as a man and a lover to something Duncan could barely see. A myth.
Duncan closed the book. It had been a long, slow parting. One gray morning, Methos was no longer there.
------
The next day's mail brought more packages and cards. After the mail carrier had cheerfully wished him happy birthday (again) and whistled her way out the door, Duncan wrangled the packages up to the loft and applied box cutter, scissors and letter-knife to them. One thing about Amanda, he thought, weighing a very good reproduction Italian Renaissance cameo in the palm of his hand: she knew how to pick out gifts. Of course, her gifts tended to be self-serving; the profile in the cameo was hers. And some of her other gifts were obviously meant for sharing. He smiled to himself as he stowed them away in the drawers next to his bed.
He placed the cameo on a shelf and picked up the cards, shuffling through them.
His hand stilled. Among the square envelopes and bright cards was a vintage postcard of the Eiffel tower towering over the Paris streets, hand-tinted in those improbable blues and greens and pinks popular (or easy to mass produce) in the early 20th century. He stared at it, ambushed by memory, all the carefully set locks and safeguards around his heart banished in an instant by an old scrap of paper. His hand shaking a little, he turned it over.
A short message. Typed, on a typewriter, and from the way some of the letters were faded, and others seemed to leap from the baseline, Duncan guessed it was typed on an old manual typewriter with a well-used ribbon. There was no signature.
"Time is the longest distance between two places." - Tennessee Williams
It had been a long time since Duncan had seen Paris. After Methos had gone, Duncan had been restless. He'd thought solitude was what he needed, so he'd gone to the Island. Once there, he found he yearned for cityscapes, so traveled to Tokyo, throwing himself into the bustle and noise of humanity. He'd wandered, as if lost, through the familiar landscapes of France, avoiding Paris, where the ghosts crowded in too closely, and had returned, finally, to Seacouver, where he was content to be alone among crowds.
His building had been closed up for years. Not that many, the way his kind reckoned time, but long enough for the place look abandoned, derelict. And full of ghosts.
Duncan cleaned the dojo from top to bottom, as a sort of penance, though he couldn't have said for what. He stripped the place to the walls, painted, refinished the floor, installed shiny modern equipment. He had planned to open it again for business. But not yet.
The loft was as he had left it, under dust sheets and plastic. Dust and cobwebs on top of that. Blinds closed and the light shuttered. Duncan opened it all to the sun and air. He went around the loft pulling off sheets, letting ghosts escape.
And ghosts had stayed, part of the familiar furnishings. They appeared now, jumbled memories. Paris and Seacouver. Methos drawing his sword under the bridge. Methos sprawled on the couch. Amanda waiting for him at the bottom of the Eiffel Tower. Amanda in the lift with Anne. Richie stalking up and down the dojo with the impatience of the young. Joe leaning on his canes. Others: Connor, Fitz, Claudia, Kit O'Grady… crowding close but so terribly far away. Some of them were gone, real ghosts. Gone from his life and gone from the world.
Duncan caught himself up. Methos and Amanda weren't ghosts. They weren't gone from his life. The blizzard of gifts strewn over the loft was proof of that. Solstice gifts from Amanda. A cryptic message from Methos. A book Duncan wasn't sure was a gift. The two of them seemed to be circling him, at least via the post.
Duncan slid the postcard under Amanda's cameo and picked up an armload of packaging. He worked steadily to clear the loft, to put away the gifts and cards, not thinking, waiting for the familiar numbness to take over, for the locks to his heart to click back in place.
-----------
Over the next few days, the mail carrier brought more packages, most of them birthday gifts, and so many of them from Amanda that he checked his credit card balances. Duncan didn't know he'd been looking out for another anonymous box until the mail carrier handed him a small, light package. His heart skipped when he saw there was no return address. He had it open before he entered the lift. A book.
Duncan smiled, feeling suddenly light. Apicius. The pages Methos hung out to dry in the basement of Shakespeare and Company. The famous lentil and chestnuts recipe. The famous dish that looked like tar, and at least the way Methos had made it, tasted like it. The recipe with the hard to get ingredients.
Methos had arrived home with a bag full of groceries. "I'm making dinner," he said. "Special treat. A recipe straight from the ancient master himself."
"Brillat-Savarin?" Duncan said.
"I said ancient, MacLeod."
"Confucius?"
"Nope."
"Archestratus?"
"Closer."
"Apicius."
"Got it in three. You're getting rusty."
"I usually go to Pepin these days," Duncan said.
"Pepin?" Methos scoffed. "The man is on television four times a day."
Duncan shrugged. "What are you making?" he poked into the bag.
Methos slapped his hands away. He pulled out a packet.
"Lentils. Oh good," Duncan said.
"You like lentils."
"I love lentils," Duncan said. "Not with chestnuts," he amended, as Methos pulled out another bag.
"You'll love this, just wait."
"Not going by the smell of that stuff, I won't. What the hell is it?"
"It's asafoetida. It'll be fine; it's less vile when it's cooked.
"Mm hm. Less vile. Sounds appetizing. And Apicius calls for this stuff?
"Actually, no. I'm using it because laser root is a bit hard to get."
Duncan moved the smelly stuff farther down the counter. "So why don't you wait on this until you can find some laser root? It has to be better than this. Let me check online."
"You won't find any," Methos said, dumping the lentils into a big pot.
"Why not?"
"Because it's extinct."
Duncan looked at him. "Extinct. Right. That would make it a bit hard to get."
"Yep. Now shoo. I've got work to do here."
Duncan held up a bottle. "Can I open this?"
"As long as you get out of my hair," Methos said, making shooing motions. Duncan moved to the other side of counter and applied a corkscrew to the bottle. "How long will this take?"
"About an hour," Methos said confidently.
But two hours later they contemplated the dark, sticky mess that spread over the plate, Methos glumly and Duncan with hungry curiosity.
"Is it supposed to look like that?" Duncan said.
"Yes."
"Then what's wrong?"
Methos wordlessly handed him a spoon.
Duncan hesitated, then scooped up a small portion. He blew on it a bit, then gingerly tasted it. He chewed. He swallowed. He washed it down with a large gulp of wine. "Ah."
"Ah," Methos agreed.
"Maybe if you used -"
"I tried that."
"Or added some -"
"Tried that, too."
"How do you know what I'm going to say?"
"Because I've tried everything. No go." He shrugged. "Things change. Extinction happens. I can't make a pie out of passenger pigeons either - not that I'd want to. Tough birds, as I remember." He brightened. "Maybe laser root can be revived. They're doing wonderful things with old DNA these days. Oh well. Back to the drawing board."
"Passenger pigeons?" Duncan said faintly as Methos took away the plate of failed Lentils and Chestnuts a la Apicius. "Why don't we just go out?"
But Methos had his nose in the cookbook. "How about sea anemone?"
"How about we call out for pizza?" Duncan said, reaching for the phone.
Duncan took the book to the kitchen counter, opened a bottle of wine, and settled down to read.
----------
As Duncan had promised the mail carrier, the Christmas packages began to arrive. Duncan dragged a narrow table near the entrance to the dojo, and the mail carrier cheerfully stacked his mail there every day.
"I'm guessing you have a large family," she said, handing him a postcard.
Duncan smiled. "Good guess."
Another postcard of the Eiffel Tower. Methos must have found a box of them at an antique store somewhere. The address was typed, on the elderly typewriter. The message was in an elegant, spiky script. Duncan frowned. His Persian was rusty, but he puzzled it out.
Until the juice ferments a while in the cask,
it isn't wine. If you wish your heart to be bright,
you must do a little work.
--Rumi
Methos again. It had to be. Do a little work? What did that mean? His heart was bright. He was fine. He had work to do, good work. It was enough. He was content to be alone, for once, for a while. It was quiet (his glance fell on the cardboard and bubble wrap strewn across his floor) it was quiet except for the daily intake from the post. There, that was proof he wasn't friendless, even if he was, at the moment, alone. Technically. He could talk to people every day, and did so -- tomorrow he was playing Santa to a crowd of children. He was fine. His heart was bright enough. If Methos wanted his heart to be brighter he could damn well show up at his door. Damn the man.
Another book had come as well. Duncan frowned at it. A small book with a brown cover, the title stamped in gilt and black with an illustration of a scythe leaning on a sheaf of wheat. Duncan opened it carefully; the cover was worn and the hinges were loose, which seemed appropriate. This was a book meant to molder and decay on some forgotten bookshelf, and not, according to a flowery inscription on the flyleaf, to be given as a Christmas present to someone in 1888.
Or this year, for that matter.
Duncan paged to the first stanza:
Oh, why should the spirit of mortal be proud?
Like a swift fleeting meteor, a fast-flying cloud,
A flash of lightning, a break of the wave,
Man passeth from life to his rest in the grave.
"Idiot," Duncan said aloud. He could see a scribbled "im" before the word "mortal" as if Methos had actually physically written it there. Lightning, right. "Very funny."
Duncan flipped through the dismal stanzas with their equally dismal drawings illustrating the futility of pride in the face of the inevitable. Death, doom, despair. The poem was… the poem was hilarious, in a horrible sort of way, a cheap-seats version of "Ozymandias," (William Knox was no Percy Shelley). But Methos had to know it was more. Between the lines of the old poem, Duncan could hear wailing, and gunfire; smell the stench of the battlefields and see the ragged fear on the black faces as they fled north, always north. It had been Abraham Lincoln's favorite poem.
A cheerful man, Abe.
"Why are you doing this, old man?" Duncan said. He put the book down and poured himself a glass of scotch. The soldiers, the fleeing slaves, the people barricaded in their plantation mansions and huddled in the cabins, every soul Duncan knew, the men he killed, the people he tried to save, Knox, the Great Emancipator himself, all were long dead. Duncan glanced at the name on the Christmas inscription. Even poor Esther was long in her grave. Duncan imagined her as a young woman who'd received the book politely, and with an inward sense of humor.
Duncan laid the book on the table, scowling at it. When "a flash of lightning" came to him, this smug and grim little book would probably outlive him too. Unless - and this was a bleak thought that sometimes came to Duncan in the early grey hours before dawn - unless he lived on, and lived on, past the memory of this book, past libraries, past cities; lived on past the last, cold, huddling remnant of humanity; lived on in a dead and empty world, he and one other, circling each other, together or on opposite sides of the world, waiting for something, a gathering of two, one last bloodthirsty craving for the lightning in their veins. There can be only one, and what then?
"Thanks a lot, friend," Duncan said. He pitched the book towards the fireplace and poured another glass of scotch.
------------
The mail carrier cheerfully handed over the latest package. Small, lightweight, thinly wrapped, just a piece of cardboard and tyvek envelope. Duncan slit the tyvek and pulled out the book. New, unread. Don Quixote. An annotated version, thank you very much. Did he think Duncan needed explication for Quixote? What was Methos's point? A not so subtle dig at Duncan, tilting at windmills and rescuing damsels in distress? A general comment on the impossibility of being a hero? A reference to Methos himself, born long before the age of chivalry?
Duncan stood by the window paging through the book at random, caught by a phrase here that resonated, a word there that started memories clanging through his head. Finally he shook himself and put the book down, went about the tasks of the day. But he remembered the book when he went up to the loft later than night, and it was beside his plate as he sat down to his dinner. He didn't know what Methos had meant by sending him the book, but he spent a very enjoyable evening lost in it.
The next day, on an early morning run to clear his mind of windmills and swordfights and good deeds that went so badly wrong they'd given him nightmares, Duncan considered. Of course sending the book was a dig at him. "Quixote and Panza = Duncan and Methos" was written all over it. But it was a friendly dig. Methos knew Duncan wasn't as clueless as the hapless Don Quixote, and no doubt imagined himself far more intelligent than Sancho Panza. Duncan smiled. And everything else considered, it was a good story. Duncan ran on through the morning, his spirits strangely lifted by a book that seemed to reach across the centuries to mock him personally.
That afternoon brought a postcard, on the familiar vintage postcard of the Eiffel Tower.
"For neither good nor evil can last forever; and so it follows that as evil has lasted a long time, good must now be close at hand." -- Miguel de Cervantes
"What is this, a clue? Cliff's notes, in case I don't get it?" Duncan flipped the postcard onto the pile with the others. "It's nonsense! Of course good and evil can last forever -- it always has. Evil can last a long time, with nothing around the corner but more evil! If anyone should know that, it's you." He raised his hands in exasperation at the insufferable man who wasn't there.
"Unreliable narrator, Methos!"
It was an old argument of theirs, Duncan arguing for a basic underlying good, Methos arguing that "people are scum, at bottom." Duncan stubbornly laying out the case of going to the aid of those in need, Methos obstinately making the counter-argument to let well enough alone, it'll all work out in the end and interfering will just make it worse.
Duncan stalked from the couch to the window. "And -- listen to me talk -- I've come around to your dismal point of view, are you happy?" He paced from the window to the couch. "So what's this? You change your mind and turn into an optimist? Pah!" Fuming, he turned again to the window. Not enough room to pace here, and the bookshelves seemed to mock him. He stormed out of the loft, clattered down the stairs and stalked the length of the empty dojo. More room to pace here, and things to punch. But something about the loft got on his nerves, too; some weird wrongness. He swore to himself, grabbed his coat and left. It was only when he'd walked furiously for several blocks that he realized that he had half expected Methos to be waiting for him down in the dojo to carry on their argument.
"So I can stop talking to myself, that's all," he said aloud, making a small dog bark. If Methos was trying to get under his skin with this -- bookish stalking, it was not going to--. Duncan stopped. If Methos was trying to get under his skin it was working. He sighed and turned around. He had to get back to his book. He'd left Quixote and Sancho Panza trapped in a cage on an oxcart.
It was only later that he realized that perhaps Methos meant it more literally, that something good was coming. "close at hand. Was he nearby?
He was really getting under Duncan's skin.
-----------
Duncan was waiting for the mail carrier when she came, but there were no packages, which rather depressed them both. But as he walked to the lift, a postcard with the familiar view of the Eiffel Tower fell out of a stack of bills. Duncan turned it over.
A long quote, a tiny story. The words were crammed into the message side of the postcard, and spread over to the bottom of the address side, the lines of type so close together it looked more like an abstract piece of word art.
THE RIGHT SORT OF FROG
Many anecdotes have already been recounted bearing on Chapman's conviction that there was easy money in performing animals and the art of the circus. On one occasion he took to training frogs in amphibious ballet but made little progress owing to the diversity of the frogs he caught in size, shape and intelligence. He noticed, however, that it was comparatively easy to frogmarch the small butty type of frogs and commenced breeding this strain.
'I intend to persevere as I am bound to have luck sooner or later,' he remarked to Keats. 'I find it is quite possible to impart knowledge provided one can get the right sort of frog.'
'It's a wrong toad that has no learning,' Keats said.
--Flann O'Brien
For a moment, Duncan was perplexed. Keats? Chapman? A poet and a translator of Homer. Stout Cortez on a peak in Darien, blah blah blah. Duncan was pretty sure a frog didn't enter into it. Who was Flann -- oh, right. Methos would be a fan. Naturally. He rubbed his forehead. A sudden headache bloomed between his eyes. Methos and his terrible jokes. Jokes and tall tales. He'd had centuries of practice telling both. "Sincerity is the hardest thing to fake," he said more than once, "but once you've got that down you've got it made."
He found his perfect foil in Joe Dawson. Joe wasn't naive, but he loved history. He'd made a friend who had been around for most of it, and he just couldn't help himself. So there was that delicious moment -- even Duncan savored it -- just before he groaned and promised to do Methos some serious mayhem, when Joe bought whatever wild story Methos was telling hook, line and sinker.
Amanda was as bad as Methos. She loved to egg him on, inspiring him to tales that would make the good Baron von Munchhausen blush. And then Duncan would join the fray. He just couldn't sit on his hands and listen while Methos claimed he'd invented publishing, taught Galileo to build a telescope or brought fire to humankind. He'd do his best to derail Methos's story with the real, if mundane, facts. But his two friends danced around him effortlessly, turning him into an unwilling straight man. Dawson would watch the whole thing like someone at a tennis match, his head snapping back and forth, trying to separate the fact from the fiction. But in the end, he was always drawn into the story, the drama, the possibility of an eyewitness account. Because he wanted to believe.
"Michelangelo loved nothing better than a banquet, as long as it included a ham," Methos began.
"No he didn't," Duncan said. "Not even if the ham was you."
"Let him tell it," Amanda said. She cupped her chin in her hand. "Do go on, Methos."
"You want to hear this?" Duncan said unbelievingly.
"Certainly," Amanda said. "I want to know what the competition was up to."
"Competition?" Duncan's eyebrows lowered.
"Michelangelo and I had a -- thing," she said. "I called him Micky," she said, fluttering her eyelashes.
"You did no such thing," Duncan said. He rounded on Methos. "Did you call him Micky?" he demanded.
"I tended to call him Monsignor," Methos said. "But of course I didn't have the charm of a young… lady."
Amanda made an unladylike noise.
"Both of you knew Michelangelo?" Joe said.
Methos and Amanda turned identically sincere faces towards him. Duncan gritted his teeth.
"And you both," Joe coughed. "Were --"
"Intimate?" Amanda breathed. "Oh yes. Well, that is, I was. I don't know about Methos. But our Micky did have a thing for street urchins, if they were beautiful enough."
"He was quite taken with a street urchin with a prodigious nose." Methos gave them all the benefit of the prodigious nose in profe.
"He liked the way you farted," Duncan said.
Heads swiveled in his direction.
Duncan smiled.
Methos opened his mouth.
"That was the story you told before," Duncan said evenly.
Methos shut his mouth again.
Joe set down his beer with a clunk. He shook his head. "Just a guy, that Michelangelo."
Duncan grinned and drank from his glass.
"Am I missing something?" Amanda said.
Duncan leaned over, all eager anticipation. "Tell us all about Micky."
------
Duncan still went to Joe's Bar, sometimes. He figured he'd keep going as long as Joe's name was out front in neon. Joe was even there, sometimes, looking good. Looking older. But he'd retired years ago. There was a younger man behind the bar, a group of younger bluesmen on the stage, new regulars, all strangers to Duncan. He hasn't really made any effort to get to know any of them. Maybe he should.
----------
The books began to pile up, and the haphazard stack beside the couch began to bother Duncan. It felt temporary, makeshift, part of his place but not part of his home. Like Methos himself, at least at the beginning. Sleeping on the couch, living out of a backpack. Even after he'd started sleeping in Duncan's bed, Methos still lived in the loft too lightly. Duncan contemplated the stack of books, then eyed his bookshelves. He pulled a few books down, then a few more. By the time the setting sun was slanting through the windows, Duncan had arranged the books Methos sent him among the ones already there, Cervantes between Casanova and Chekov, Apicius with -- Duncan grinned -- Jacques Pepin. When he was done, there was nothing to distinguish the new arrivals from the old favorites. But Duncan knew exactly where each new book rested on each shelf.
Later, reading in is bed at midnight, he found his eyes drawn to the shelves, searching them out.
He sighed, put his book down, and turned off the light. But the books seemed to crowd and jostle his thoughts even more in the dark, so he turned it back on. It was a long time before he fell asleep.
---------------
The next day the mail carrier's eyebrows wagged knowingly as she handed him an Eiffel Tower postcard and a plain brown package. The plain brown wrapper was appropriate, Duncan thought, as it fell away to reveal a cover with a colorful faux Persian design. He set the book on the table and opened it out flat. A small paper orgy rose from the pages.
Methos had dragged Duncan and Amanda to a street fair to hear a three-man bad play an energetic mix of old-time music and punk (not to Duncan's taste, but they were clever; there'd been a song about living on Shit Creek). Idling through the stalls, they ate deep fried food on sticks and drank beer from paper cups. Duncan bought a few bottles of local wine, Amanda bought a long silk scarf, and Methos found a battered copy of the Pop-Up Kama Sutra.
He thought it was hilarious. Duncan rolled his eyes. Amanda laced the scarf through her fingers thoughtfully.
Back at the loft, feeling relaxed and happy, things went the way they often did, especially if they had wine, an impromptu sex toy, and a comic book version of an ancient sex manual.
Methos settled himself comfortably amongst the pillows on Duncan's bed. "And now, children, let me show you how the ancients did these things. Let us turn to page -- '69,' very funny, Amanda."
There aren't actually very many positions illustrated in the Pop-Up Kama Sutra; but they did what they could. They bent themselves into positions that were erotic, or uncomfortable, or both; stretched and turned and lifted and entwined legs and arms, laughing all the while. Amanda, unsurprisingly, was best at it, her slender, lithe second-story girl's body in top form. Methos would have been better at it if he hadn't been laughing at Duncan. Duncan wasn't good at it at all. The combination of sex and gymnastics drove him crazy. He was by turns aroused and exasperated.
"Just let me do this one," he said, pointing to the margins where a pair of pigs was going at it in the normal way that pigs do. "That's about my speed."
"Oh come on, MacLeod, be more adventurous. With your special skills, surely you can rig up something to hang Amanda from the ceiling."
"Hey!"
"Hm," Duncan said, looking at the illustration of a woman displayed on a pillow suspended from an elegant rope-and-pulley contraption. "Very decorative. And you'd be out of my hair, too."
Amanda leaned into him, "Out of your hair? Oh, no. I don't think you want me out of your hair, darling. I was about to do 'the pair of tongs'. Do you think he really wants me out of his hair, Methos?"
"Hang him from the ceiling," Methos said, pulling her towards him. "I'll take the 'pair of tongs'."
Duncan pulled her back. "The 'pair of tongs' is mine," he growled. She snuggled closer. "What's the 'pair of tongs'?"
Amanda showed him.
As for the postcard that had made the mail carrier wink:
"Are there sexual fetishes that involve books? There must be. I try not to imagine how they might work." --Robin Sloan
Duncan tapped the cover of the silly little pop-up book. "Like this," Duncan said firmly, to Sloan, to the absent Methos, to himself. He laid the postcard in the book and snapped it shut.
If he could, Duncan would send Methos a postcard.
Wish you were here.
----------
The book that arrived the following day was different from the others in three ways: it was a how-to book on home renovation that Duncan had never seen before, though yeah yeah, he got the joke; it was the last book Duncan would receive in the mail, though he didn't know it at the time; and it was a library book, due a week from today.
Duncan frowned, and examined the book carefully for clues. There were no bookmarks, sticky notes, or marginalia, no markings except SEACOUVER PUBLIC LIBRARY stamped in blue. He skimmed the text, got engrossed in a section on flooring, and shook himself. There was nothing notable about the book itself. Just the fact that it was a library book, and Duncan would have to return it.
The skin on the back of his neck prickled.
A few minutes on his laptop gave him a name and a helpful photo. Peter Adamson, Collections and Acquisitions.
Duncan grabbed his coat, left the dojo and walked toward the city center. To the library.
The new Seacouver public library was an impressive building, its circular, colonnaded wall giving a creditable imitation of the Colosseum. Inside it looked more like a small city in a science fiction movie. Duncan made his way to the center of the structure, a more traditionally library-shaped box that contained the stacks themselves. Ignoring signs directing him to book-return kiosks, he found the office number he wanted on a wall-sized directory and headed for the elevators.
The elevator door opened on a wide space lined with glass-fronted offices. He knew Methos's
office without looking at the number. Everything was on the floor. So was he.
"Methos," Duncan said. He clutched the home improvement book to his chest like a shield. His heart was pounding.
Methos looked up and smiled.
"Sorry I don't have a beer to offer you. Here. Mineral water."
Duncan caught it in one hand, still clutching his book.
Methos rose to his feet in one graceful motion. He tapped at Duncan's book. "Have you found my gifts -- of use?"
"You're an idiot," Duncan said. But he couldn't help smiling.
"Ah, I see that they have. Which is your favorite?"
"What do you think?"
"Hm. It's rather a toss-up, isn't it? Cervantes or -- Knox."
"Knox, right. The Pop-Up Kama Sutra was a nice touch."
"You liked that, did you? Too bad my lunch break is so short."
Duncan grinned. Methos grinned. They stood grinning at each other.
Duncan's face felt tight. He took a breath and said the words he and Amanda always used when they met after a long time apart. "Are you… free?"
Methos grin softened. "As a bird, Duncan."
-----------
Duncan marveled that it had been that easy, after all. Methos's little literary puzzle had been a map, a beacon drawing him to where Methos was hiding in plain sight: in the largest concentration of books on the Northwest continent. It figured.
It was tentative, at first. They talked. They sketched their dealings with other immortals, in the game or out. Challenges declined (or avoided), challenges accepted and obviously, won. Friends in far-flung places.
"Where in the world is Amanda Devereux," Methos murmured.
Duncan looked at him sharply. "On her way, here, I think." The use-by date of some of her gifts weren't far in the future.
Methos smiled.
Duncan wasn't surprised that Methos wasn't surprised that Amanda was coming to Seacouver. "She might be at the loft by now."
"No, she'll be here," Methos pulled out his phone and thumbed through the tiny screens, "Thursday."
Duncan threw up his hands. "In cahoots. I knew it."
Methos looked at him innocently. "Nothing so conspiratorial," he said. "We've been … in communication."
"Hah. You know she's been sending me a king's ransom in winter gifts? Softening me up, with her little favors and her -- her toys." Methos blushed a little, and Duncan wondered whether they had been 'in communication' about some of the raunchier toys. He'd find out later. "While you," he said, stabbing a finger at Methos's chest, "aim for the heart."
"Not for the heart, MacLeod," Methos said mildly. "Just a few warning shots to wake you up."
Duncan grimaced. "Some of them landed pretty close to home," he said.
"Good," Methos said.
Later, much later, after a lunch break that turned into the rest of the afternoon, and a few beers that turned into sex on the couch ("This is nostalgic, but there's a perfectly good bed three feet away." "Humor me.") and a very late dinner (takeout pizza), Duncan pulled a book from the shelves and dropped it on Methos's chest (where he was sprawled, back on the couch).
"Oof. What is this?"
"A gift."
Methos turned the book over.
And laughed and laughed.
--End
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Books referenced
Unknown art book, I don't know, you'll have to ask Tazlet
Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie
Marcus Gavius Apicius, De Re Coquinaria
Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi, "Be Lost in the Call"
William Knox, Oh, Why Should the Spirit of Mortal be Proud?
Miguel de Cervantes, Don Quixote
Flann O'Brien, The Various Lives of Keats and Chapman
Johnathan Biggs and Bob Robinson, The Pop-Up Kama Sutra
Robin Sloan, Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore
Better Homes & Gardens New Complete Guide to Home Repair and Improvement or similar
Your guess is as good as mine.