Happy Holidays, hafital!

[amand_r]

Title: Holiday Spirits
Author: Wanda Lu Langenham
Written for: hafital
Characters/Pairings: Duncan/Methos
Rating: PG
Author's Notes: Slash, not very explicit (a little handsy)
Summary: Duncan has visitors on his birthday



When Duncan MacLeod looked in the mirror and saw the angels on his shoulders, he put it down to the scotch. He'd been drinking. He'd been drinking a lot. Not the best stuff he kept for friends. Not even second-best. Third-rate or worse, picked up cheap on the spur of the moment, the kind of corner-store liquor good for warming one's bones after a trudge through the rain, just right to get good and drunk and wallow in self-pity. It was the Winter Solstice and he was alone. It was his birthday.

"Happy birthday!" said the angel on his left shoulder, in a voice that was surprisingly deep for something so small. And, well, imaginary.

Duncan closed his eyes and reached for the vile scotch. He took a swig straight from the bottle and sat for a moment. He felt better. He opened his eyes. The angel was still there.

He had a tiny pointed chin with a tiny pointed goatee, glowing red eyes, and lips that curled in a sneer over sharp white teeth. He wore a perfectly tailored suit, and carried something that looked like a pitchfork. Duncan squinted. It was.

"Don't mind him," said a voice that sounded like sunshine. "It's a glorious Solstice. Rejoice!"

This came from the angel on Duncan's right shoulder. A long, sort of ribbony and drapey personage who seemed to be spun out of pearlescent light. She had eyes like sparkling sapphires and smiled a lot. She too carried something, which Duncan decided was a small, golden carrot.

Duncan shook his head to clear it of unlikely angels. "I am drunk," he said to the mirror.

"You can talk to us," the Good Angel said brightly.

"Yes," said the Bad Angel. "We're right here."

"Where did you -- you can't be--." Duncan faltered. They couldn't be, yet there they were. He poured two-three fingers of the dreadful scotch into a glass, now that he had company. "Why," he asked the mirror, the angels, the universe in general, "do I have angels on my shoulders?"

"Fair question," said the Bad Angel. "You're just about to make what could be a serious false step, and I am here to guide your stumbling feet down the path to perdition."

"Oh." Duncan drained the glass. I need to get more drunk, he thought.

"And I am here," said the Good Angel, "to make sure your steps are steady as you climb towards the pearly gates of heaven."

"Pearly gates?" That didn't sound good. Duncan's hand went unconsciously to this throat. "Am I, ah --?"

"Oh no," the angels chimed together. Their voices clashed, somehow, like an off-key celestial choir.

"Plenty of time left, plenty of time," the Bad Angel said smoothly. "But one needs to start early on these things." He rubbed his tiny hands together. "And there is no time like the present, I always say."

"He always says a lot of things," the Good Angel said primly. "Most of it rubbish."

"How am I wrong, here?" the Bad Angel said peevishly. "Your lot obviously thinks it's a good thing to start early -- you try to get 'em as infants. Douse 'em with your holy water and all!"

"That's just to protect them from you," said the good angel. "If we didn't, you and your gang would be hovering around the poor wee babes like vultures in candy shop."

"Vultures in a candy shop? What does that even mean?"

"He knows what I mean," said Good Angel said to Duncan. "He just likes to criticize."

"Who better?" said the Bad Angel, reasonably enough. He turned to Duncan. "Now, let's get down to business. Solitary drinking -- good. Drinking bad scotch, even better. Thinking of absent friends…" He paused meaningfully.

Duncan, whose head had been swiveling back and forth like a spectator at a tennis match, was caught off guard by this new tack. His fingers tightened around the glass. Absent friends. So many gone, now. So many dead. Darius, Fitz, May-Ling, Jacob. Good friends. Some of the dead at his own hand. Cullen, Ingrid... "Sean." The sound of his friend's name startled him. He hadn't meant to say it aloud.

"Oh, ouch," said the Bad Angel. "That one's gotta hurt. Not enough bad scotch in the world to drown the pain of that one's passing." He leaned on his small pitchfork, which dug into Duncan's shoulder.

Suddenly awash in remembrance and guilt, Duncan didn't notice the small physical pain. "I killed him," he said dully.

"Sean doesn't blame you," the Good Angel said earnestly in his ear. "Remember that. He's with you now, in spirit. And," she darted in front of him to touch his chest lightly, "in your heart."

"In his heart!" The Bad Angel scoffed and jabbed Duncan enthusiastically. "I'm sure the fellow would be just as happy to be alive elsewhere than in this one's heart."

"Will you stop?" The Good Angel rounded on her opposite number. "Can't you see the man is suffering?"

"Of course he's suffering!" the Bad Angel shot back. "That's what I'm here for!" He turned to Duncan, his face ugly with greedy malice. "Took his head yourself, yes? While he was reaching out to you in friendship?"

"Yes," Duncan said. He stared into his glass. He thought for a moment he saw Sean's face on the surface of the amber liquid. The pool…

"That's just the point!" The Good Angel said. "He wasn't himself. His spirit had been taken over, subsumed in evil, he was overwhelmed and lost to himself -- the work of your people. And then you have the nerve to blame him. Hmph. Typical."

"We can't just waltz in there, you know. There's some darkness already there, or we can't do a thing. No smoke without fire. He was good with it, hey, Dunkie?"

"I was not," Duncan snapped. The hated nickname snapped him out of his self-pity. Why was he letting hallucinations get at him, anyway? He closed his eyes and tuned out them out. He clutched at the memory of Methos and the pool, and Sean's forgiveness, and how he fought himself, and won. He sighed. The angels were right. Both of them.

He cleared his throat. The two angels stopped arguing. He could feel their beady little -- imaginary eyes on him.

"I'm drunk," he said firmly, "and you two don't exist. So go away."

"What, and leave you all alone on your birthday?" the Bad Angel reared back in mock horror. "That would be as bad as -- whatshername."

"Amanda." Duncan made a face, and raised his glass in salute to his wandering friend and her wandering heart, glad to exchange the old ragged grief for mere irritation. And where was Amanda? Gallivanting in Norway -- Norway -- with a new boyfriend. Boyfriend! What was Amanda doing with a boyfriend in December? She should be here.

"She should be here," said the Bad Angel, echoing his thoughts.

"Oh, pooh," the Good Angel said airily, waving her hand. Duncan found himself mesmerized for a moment by the tiny sparkling golden carrot she held. Amanda would love get her hands on something like that.

"She called, didn't she? She sent a card, and a gift." She gestured pointedly to a magnum of very good champagne Amanda had had delivered to him. Duncan knew she expected to share it with him when she came back from her ramblings. It was a promise for the future.

"She loves you, you big oaf," the Good Angel said.

"What kind of love is that, to go off with another man, eh?" The Bad Angel sneered.

"She just doesn't love you exclusively," the Good Angel continued smoothly. "But you know she'll be back."

"She always comes back," Duncan agreed.

"She might not come back this time," the Bad Angel's voice was oily and insinuating. "Maybe she's found a guy she could stay with for a couple hundred years, eh? That'll be a lot of birthdays alone."

Duncan wilted. "Perhaps."

"Nonsense," the Good Angel said sternly. "Amanda will be back in Seacouver before you know it. Or she'll call you up to meet in Paris. Or, you never know, she might need your help to fend off some head-hunter in Jakarta. Or maybe," the Good Angel warmed to her theme, "she'll send a plea for you to get her out of jail in Argentina, or help her escape from pirates in the Caribbean, or you know, just any old thing."

"More trouble than she's worth, that one," the Bad Angel said to Duncan. He turned to the Good Angel. "You know there are no longer actual pirates in the Caribbean, right?"

"Whatever," the Good Angel waved this away. "Of course she's worth it, Duncan. She's one of your best friends, and always will be, no matter how much, er, trouble she gets you into. She's special."

Duncan smiled, thinking of Amanda's "special skills."

"Trouble and more trouble," the Bad Angel said. "You'd be better off if she stayed away. That other guy, too. Better off without him."

Duncan stood up abruptly. "I need coffee." He was tired of talking to imaginary angels, and especially tired of listening to them argue with each other. Maybe if he got away from the mirror, they'd disappear. S'right. A man shouldn't sit staring at himself in a mirror anyway. Especially on the Solstice. Especially at midnight. Hah! Old legends. The borders between worlds weakened, Things coming through. Uh huh. I didn't spend four hundred mumble years in the pursuit of rational knowledge to be undone by a pair of angels parking on my shoulders. Right! Coffee. Duncan walked unsteadily to the kitchen, opened a cupboard and took down a can of coffee beans.

"Methos, that's his name." The Bad Angel was still on his shoulder, still trash-talking his friends. "You're too good for him."

Duncan turned on the coffee grinder to drown him out.

"Don't listen to him," the Good Angel said. She dangled the tiny gold carrot before his eyes. "He's smart, he's good-looking, and he likes you."

Duncan started to smile, then winced as the Bad Angel gave him a vicious jab to the left shoulder blade. "Likes you? Is that all? You want to give your heart and soul to someone who just likes you?"

"Better him than you," Duncan said under his breath. He smiled at the Good Angel and her carrot.

"I heard that," the Bad Angel said, and jabbed him again.

Duncan set the coffee maker going and absently rubbed his sore shoulder, knocking the Bad Angel over backwards. The angel cursed and settled himself a few inches above Duncan's shoulder, eyeing him warily.

Duncan filled a mug with coffee and sat down at the counter. The angels continued their discussion.

"He's a bad influence on you," said the Bad Angel.

"He's a good foil, to sharpen and strengthen your own moral philosophy," said the Good Angel.

"He was Death on a Horse!" said the Band Angel.

"He's the oldest living example of how someone can change for the good," said the Good Angel.

"He's cynical, arrogant, selfish, and values his own skin above all," said the Bad Angel.

"Only on the surface. He's really loyal, and when he loves, he loves deeply and unreservedly."

"He's mad, bad, and dangerous to know!"

"No, that was his friend Byron."

"Well, right there, that tells you something. Look at this friends."

"Look at this friend," the Good Angel pointed at Duncan, who was sitting with his elbows propped on the counter, his head in his hands. "And the lovely Amanda."

"Amanda! Ha! Methos has got the hots for Amanda and would jump her bones if she gave him half a chance."

"Very likely. But just imagine it! Her voice became more animated. "They would make such a cute threesome--"

"Stop!" Duncan smacked his hands down on the countertop. "This is getting personal. And you," he said, pointing at the Good Angel, "why are you defending Methos and you," he pointed to the Bad Angel, "trying to talk me out of -- of whatever you're trying to talk me out of." What was the damned imp trying to talk him out of? Duncan gingerly probed the sore spot that Methos occupied in his heart. Right. Nothing there but anger. Mostly. "Seems to me you'd want me to, ah, engage with Methos if he's that bad for me. Leading me down the path to perdition, and all that."

"He doesn't want you to be happy," the Good Angel sniffed.

"I would be happy with Methos?" Duncan's eyebrows raised. He let the thought roll around in his head. Happy. That was a word that he had never really connected with Methos. Interesting, perhaps. Exciting, to be sure. Provoking, absolutely. But happy? As in contented, comfortable, serene, satisfied? As in -- ever after? His eyebrows lowered. Well, it didn't matter, Methos wasn't here. To be happy with. Ever after or otherwise.

The Bad Angel shrugged. "You'd go down the path to perdition faster without him. From my perspective." He made a sour face. "So do what you want. Fornicate with the man, I don't care. I wash my hands of you, and you too," he pointed his pitchfork at the Good Angel.

"Fine," said the Good angel.

"Fine," said the Bad angel.

Duncan rubbed the bridge of his nose. "You can fornicate yourselves," he said under his breath.

"What?" they said in unison. Duncan was beginning to understand. The two of them weren't really different at all, they were just, hah, they were two sides of a bad penny. Wait a minute.

"Wait," he said, holding up his hand as if it would help order his thoughts. "You said I was just about to take a wrong step. What did you mean by that?"

"You figure it out. I'm done." The Bad Angel glowered at him. "Just don't say I didn't tell you so."

"Oh, go for it," the Good Angel said briskly. "It'll be rough in spots, I won't lie to you, but overall, good. Eighty-six percent positive."

"Eighty-six percent positive?" The Bad Angel said incredulously. "You gonna listen to someone who says 'eighty-six percent positive'? Bah, never mind. I'm done."

"But what--" Duncan never finished the question.

Because at that moment, the skin-crawling sensation of an immortal presence hit him between the shoulder blades, and the same time he heard the soft whirring and thumping of machinery. Someone was coming up in the lift. Duncan was around the counter and drawing his sword by the time the lift clanked to a stop. There was a shadowy figure inside. Duncan faced his opponent, stone cold sober, angels forgotten.

"I am Duncan MacLeod of the clan MacLeod," he spoke the old words of the challenge. "Show yourself."

The figure pulled up the gate and stepped into the loft, shoving his hands in the pockets of a gray trench coat.

Duncan lowered his sword. "Methos!"

"Duncan MacLeod," Methos echoed agreeably. He stood there, seemingly at ease, but with a shadow in his eyes. "Of the Clan MacLeod. Happy birthday." He smiled, but made no move to come further into the loft.

"How did you get in?" Duncan sheathed his sword and laid it aside. If there was to be a contest, it wouldn't be that kind.

Methos held up a key. "You never change your locks."

"Why are you here?" Duncan gritted his teeth. A moment ago, he'd been considering happiness with Methos. Now that Methos was here, he just wanted to -- he wasn't sure what he wanted to do.

"Did Joe send you? Amanda?" He felt a sudden cold prickle. "Has something happened?"

"Nothing's wrong. I just thought I'd drop by."

"Just dropped by to wish me a happy birthday," Duncan said, folding his arms over his chest. "Right. Why are you really here?"

Methos looked a bit embarrassed. He started to say something and stopped. He pursed his lips.

Duncan waited.

Methos sighed. "All right. It's a bit odd. This morning, I was in a coffee bar down in L.A. It's not exactly passing by, but close enough to start thinking. About Seacouver, and Joe, and well. You."

"Me."

"Yes, well, you're memorable." Methos smiled briefly and went on. "A couple sat at my table. The place was crowded, full of Christmas shoppers and tourists, so I couldn't really say no. They started talking to me, and it got personal really fast. First it was just, you know, how important old friends are, especially at the holidays, the usual maudlin stuff people say to each other when it's almost Christmas." He made a wry face. "Then they started going on about time slipping away and opportunities missed that you'll regret to the end of your days, and how it wasn't good to be alone for so long, and," Methos coughed, "it seemed more pointed, somehow."

Duncan frowned. "What did they look like?"

"Look like?" Methos shrugged. "Average. Middle-aged. The kind of people you don't even see, until they're suddenly across the table getting nostalgia all over you like pumpkin spiced caramel latte."

"So they… just appeared? Out of nowhere?"

"Well, I expect they appeared from Melrose Avenue, but yes, it seemed like they were just suddenly there, disapproving of my black espresso and grilling me about my friends and my love life." He looked at Duncan curiously.

"Was one of them pale with blue eyes, and the other one have a goatee?"

"Uh, no. Brown-eyed and clean-shaven. Are you all right, Mac?"

"Never mind," Duncan said through gritted teeth. "I had a little run-in with a pair of -- holiday do-gooders myself." He glanced at his left shoulder. It was empty. But he knew that. They had gone the minute Methos stepped out of the lift. "They seem to have left the premises."

"Have you been drinking, MacLeod?"

"Not nearly enough," Duncan said grimly. "So. They grilled you?"

Methos sighed. "You know how it is. A couple who've been together so many years they finish each other's sentences, suddenly feel it's their duty to give a single man advice. For his own good."

"The spirit of Christmas," Duncan said. "Santa Claus, wise men, angels with gifts."

"Maybe." Methos frowned. "They weren't exactly angelic. I think they were working up to some kind of con, but --" He stopped. Duncan was surprised to see a blush on Methos's cheeks.

"But?"

Methos smiled a little crookedly. "But their opening salvo to soften me up worked altogether too well."

"It must have," Duncan said drily.

"I left my espresso on the table," Methos said. "And booked a flight from my phone as I walked out the door."

"Maybe that was the con," Duncan said, almost to himself.

Methos tilted his head, studying Duncan. "Maybe so."

They stood, safely at arm's length, looking at each other.

"It's been a long time," Duncan said finally.

"Yes."

"Is it raining in L.A.?"

"Not as much as it is here," Methos said.

"Ah."

"Let's just get this out of the way, shall we?" Methos met Duncan's eyes, stepping closer.

Duncan opened his mouth to say -- well, whatever he thought he was going to say he never knew, because Methos kissed him.

Duncan had imagined their first kiss a hundred times, a hundred different ways. Against the wall in the dim light of the blues bar, while people danced past without seeing them. While staggering against each other in an alley on a night of drunken revelry. Thrown off-balance and into each other's arms in a crowded train car. In the back seat of a cab, waiting for Amanda, who conveniently never shows up. Laughing together under a bridge after shaking both their watchers just for the hell of it. Holding each other after a terrible challenge, one of them still trembling from the quickening. Methos unexpectedly shoving him up against a wall, in a full-body football tackle, knocking Duncan's head against the brick with the force of his kiss. Duncan burying his hands in Methos's baggy, ugly, stupid sweater and hauling him into a kiss so passionate they end up on Duncan's bed. Sparring in the dojo, one sword sliding against the other until their faces were so, so close. He'd imagined silly kisses and passionate kisses, rough kisses and tender kisses, secret and public kisses.

This kiss was like nothing he'd imagined.

It was a matter-of-fact, friendly, and almost casual kiss, the sort of kiss a man gave his partner of years and decades. It was intimate, familiar; it assumed an understanding. The utter and absolute conviction of entitlement in Methos's kiss, the way he claimed it -- and Duncan -- as his right, his due -- knocked Duncan breathless.

"Methos, I --"

Methos kissed him again, pulling him into an embrace that did, this time, match some of Duncan's more passionate fantasies. A fierce and fiery kiss, that melted Duncan's heart, his bones and any lingering notion of resistance. His arms wrapped around Methos as naturally as if they had already held each other a hundred times, and would a thousand times more.

Methos leaned back in his arms and smiled.

Duncan wagged a finger in his face. "You -- You -- Damn you!"

"That's a yes, I take it?"

Duncan pulled Methos roughly to him.

"And by the way," Methos said smoothly, "That is not a gun in my pocket."

"Are you ever serious?" Duncan tried to frown at Methos but failed. Methos placed Duncan's hand on his crotch -- a warm bulge that was definitely not a gun -- and Duncan pushed closer to him.

"I'm serious about this, MacLeod." Methos said, with a sudden odd catch in his voice. Duncan pulled back to look at him. Methos's eyes were serious, though his mouth twisted in a wry smile. "It's time," he said.

"Yes," Duncan said. "Well past time, I'd say."

"Would you?" Methos searched Duncan's face. "I was never sure."

"I'm surprised. I thought I wore my heart on my sleeve. You've told me so, often enough."

"But not for me," Methos said.

"I plead self-defense," Duncan said.

"And now?"

"Ah, well, now you've knocked down all my defenses. I surrender."

"Good. We can surrender together." He made a sign. "Peace?"

"Idiot." Duncan smiled.

Methos sauntered past Duncan, dropping his coat (which made a dull thud as it hit the floor) and pulling his ugly, stupid, baggy sweater over his head. "I've missed this couch," he said, standing arms akimbo, looking down at it.

"Forget the couch." Duncan locked an arm though Methos's and tugged him toward the bed.

"Oh, so it's all 'bed, now!' is it? Amanda warned me about that."

"Amanda?" Duncan stopped. He heard a lilting voice in his head. "They would make such a cute threesome." He shivered. Then smiled. Then frowned. "Is she coming, too?"

"God, I hope not." Methos drew the clip from Duncan's hair and let it fall around his face.

"Fornicate with the man, I don't care." Duncan blinked. Had it been a drunken reverie, just a lonely man arguing with himself? Had Methos's encounter with holiday agony aunts been -- just a coincidence? Was the whole thing in Duncan's head?

"This is real," Duncan said softly to Methos. Methos so close to him. Methos in his bed. "Tell me this is real."

Methos look at him sharply, then smiled. "It's real, MacLeod. I assure you, I'm not an apparition."

"Good. I've had my fill of apparitions."

Methos touched his face softly. "Someday you're going to tell me what you're talking about."

Duncan leaned over to kiss Methos. Oh, this is long, long overdue. "Tomorrow. Perhaps."

Perhaps. Perhaps the angels had really been here, arguing on Duncan's shoulders. Perhaps something like angels, or elves, or good fairies had descended upon Methos in a Melrose Avenue coffee bar. Perhaps, after all, it had been one of those Christmas miracles, or a Solstice enchantment, a singularity when the borders between worlds are thin and magic shines through.

Or maybe it all came out of a bottle of bad scotch.

Did it matter? Methos was here, and Duncan, for now, was happy.

--End--