FIC: Highlander: Disappearance

[fajrdrako_fic]

Title: Disappearance
Author: fajrdrako
Fandom: Highlander
Pairing: Methos/Duncan
Rating: G
Disclaimer: Not mine, no claims.
Notes: Posted to Geocities February 12, 2001, and long lost till I found an online copy.


Disappearance


The room was empty. The flat that had housed Adam Pierson, five-thousand-year-old student of the human condition, was scoured clean and empty as a miser's heart. Methos was gone.

Duncan wandered. Two levels, five rooms, each as empty and spotless as the rest. Had Methos scoured the place himself? No, he'd probably hired a maid as his last act as Adam Pierson.

It made sense, of course. Methos had made survival his creed, and survive he had, though eras forgotten by history. He predated the pyramids. Duncan leaned his back against the wall and sank to the floor, watching the tree through the window. In spring, it would be in full blossom. Methos had decorated his simple rooms with art and filled them with books and music.

Five thousand years of developing taste. But beauty wasn't his priority. Knowledge, observation… Duncan closed his eyes. He could imagine Methos standing there, no, sitting on the floor where the foot of his bed had been, with beer, and music.

It took four hundred years to happen, thought Duncan wearily. Four hundred years. He had loved widely and deeply and often. There had been lovers he had cherished and lost, lovers he had left and found again over and over, lovers he destroyed in Quickenings as violent as the passion before preceding it. He had felt infinite sorrow at his losses, from Debra Campbell to Tessa Noel., from first love to last.

So here was another one. A different pattern, a different sadness.

Methos was not his lover. It would be exaggerating to call him a friend. They had met; they had fought; Methos had tried to manipulate him into killing him because he thought it was the way to destroy Kalas. A contradiction, there. Why had Methos put aside his creed to survive at all costs? In five thousand years, was Kalas so much worse than all the villains who had ever lived? "Live, Highlander," he had said.

Live. So he had, and he, Methos and Kalas were all alive. But Methos was gone, as elusive as his legend.

Stupid, to try to outguess the oldest man alive.

Stupid, to feel such loss when there had been nothing to lose. A brief encounter. A meeting with a man more intriguing than most, but not the sort of meeting that makes a man feel this emptiness.

Yes, he would have liked to have talk to him more. A casual conversation, wandering through a park by the Seine. But it hadn't been casual, had it? Not for him. Oh, Methos had made it so, assuring him that he didn't know the secrets of the universe, wasn't blessed with holy enlightenment, wasn't much more than any other ordinary guy, except old.

Lies, all lies. Methos was about as ordinary as the Sphinx, and as unique, and as beautiful.

Beautiful. Desirable. Duncan almost groaned aloud: there he was, doing it again, falling in love with the unusual and the elusive. Methos had made himself a ghost, hiding behind the echoes of other people's experience. Even in the world of the Immortals, he had hidden himself so deeply he had become less than a legend. Among the Watchers, he was a validated fact that faded when they tried to close in on it.

Might as well desire a ghost.

And yet, and yet... Methos had been firm flesh in his arms when he had touched his sword to Methos' throat, not drawing blood, not intending to kill, but needing to know whether Methos would kill him, and why. Needing to know that the bond he felt with this man was real.
Real, maybe. One-sided, certainly. Now Methos was gone, and the Watcher Adam Pierson too, and Duncan was sitting on the floor of a flat that wasn't his mourning something he would never have and a man he would never know.

He ought to leave. It was getting dark, and he had no business here.

They would meet again. Surely they would meet again. All Immortals came across each other, over and over again, if they survived, and Methos would certainly survive.

He had lived four hundred years without encountering Methos, without coming across any real indication of his existence. Until now, in Paris, three years after the death of Tessa, too late, too briefly.

He covered his face with his hands, imagining the flat again as it had been. The sculpture, that might have been one of Tessa's. The eerie sensation that this was an Immortal, but of a different calibre than of all others. The tilt of Methos' head as he listened to the music, and threw the can of beer.

"Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod," said Methos lightly, in exactly the tone he had used before, making Duncan jump.

"Methos " he said, and this time it was no question. He sprang to his feet.

"What are you doing here?" asked Methos. He stood on the stairs, one foot on the step below the other, as casual as ever.

"I came to find you."

"I wasn't home."

"I thought you had gone forever."

"I had. How clever of you." Methos sauntered down the rest of the stairs.

"I wanted to say good-bye," said Duncan awkwardly.

"Oh? Why?"

Duncan flushed, which was answer enough. "We were friends," he said.

"Hardly."

"I thought..."

"Don't tell me you were fascinated by the Methos mystique "

"No," said Duncan honestly. "I was fascinated by you."

Methos sat down on the bottom step. His trench coat was black; so were his running shoes. "Don't fall for it, MacLeod. I told you, I'm not special. And those who love me die."

"I believe it," said Duncan. Methos raised his eyebrows, so he continued. "Those who hate you die, too, and those who don't care. Everyone dies. Even us."

"Not me. I survive."

Duncan nodded. "Without love?" he said.

"You bastard," said Methos. The side of his mouth twisted in a wry smile. He shook his head slightly.

As endearments go, it was enough. Duncan moved to the stairway and bent, cradling Methos' head in his hands, kissing his mouth as he had wanted to yesterday. It was all he had imagined, and more. Sensuality; repressed feelings; hope. He had a sense of Methos' terrible loneliness, a life lived in the balance.

"Come back to the barge with me," he said.

"I was just there. You weren't home." Methos stood.

Duncan did not move back, so they stood, chest to chest, breathing the same air. Methos parted the opening of Duncan's coat, running his hands under his shirt, holding off a kiss. His leg slipped between Duncan's legs, and he turned, pushing him against the wall, in a move that hinted at martial arts. His touch combined gentleness and force. His lips on Duncan's, his body against his body, one hand in his hair, the other delicately teasing the side of his throat, he shivered.

He moved his lips to Duncan's ear, licking it, biting it, as his other hand wandered down Duncan's arching body. "Love me," he whispered.

"I do," said Duncan, helpless with lust, and content.

- end -