"What are you doing here?"
"Gotta be somewhere."
I'd flicked on the light in my apartment to find Methos sprawled all over my sofa, sucking on a bottle of beer. He blinked in the sudden light.
"You have your own place."
"Yeah. You have better beer. I need better beer." With what looked like great effort, he forced himself to sit up.
I shucked off my coat and sat next to him. He'd gone through a six pack of some lousy American stuff I keep on hand for emergency. There was most of a case left. "I do have better beer, you know." I picked up a bottle and opened it anyway. It was warm.
"Doesn't really matter, Joseph. I'd just be wasting it." He downed what he had in one gulp and opened another.
"You can get bad beer anywhere. Why here?"
"I'm not welcome here?" He made as if to get to his feet. I caught a glimpse of his eyes as he did. For the first time, I could actually read something in them. And what I saw frightened me. Methos was five thousand years old because he chose to be. He looked ready to make another choice.
"You're here. You're had half of this crap already. Might as well stay."
He nodded carefully and collapsed back down, sprawling out again. His shoe-less foot brushed my right leg, where I had leg. He looked at me over his beer bottle.
"Good. Not sure I could have made it out the door."
"What happened tonight?" Dumb, dumb, dumb question. I knew exactly what had gone down.
"Some Watcher. You're going to have to turn in your tattoo. He's gone. Duncan got him."
"Byron wanted it that way. He was asking for it."
"Doesn't make it any easier. Damn it, Joseph. I'm bloody tired of saying good-bye. I've said in every damn language for five millennia and I *hate* it." He chugged down the beer and reached for yet another. If he'd been mortal, I'd have stopped him by now.
Instead, I took another slug of my own. Still bad, still warm, still...liquid. He blinked slowly.
"You'd think I'd be used to it. You'd think after a couple thousand years, it'd be old hat. Everyone I know dies. Every*thing* I know dies. Cities, armies, nations. I've seen cities you never heard of grow and die. Helped build one or two, helped kill a couple more. Languages...I've said goodbye in languages no one has spoken in so long I've forgotten their names. And it's all so much faster now."
"Faster?"
He looked at me. "Faster. Everything is *faster*. You...damn, I'm tired. I'm tired of all of it. Tired of me." He looked at the beer in his hand, and put it down. "I'm getting maudlin. Time to sober up."
"Methos, why are you here?"
He didn't look at me. He didn't seem to notice his foot was on my thigh. Was rubbing my thigh. I noticed. I wasn't sure whether I wanted him to stop or not, so I let him continue until I did decide.
"It's hard work staying drunk on this stuff. Not enough alcohol to make it worth the effort. Maybe if you had whiskey or something with a kick to it."
I shrugged. "I have some of that. Do you think it's a good idea?" Yeah, Immortals kept healing themselves. They had to make an effort to stay drunk. I took another sip of my own. This was not worth any effort. I took one more.
"I think I'll try sober for a while. Drunk is just too hard."
"Why are you here, Methos?"
"You had beer."
"Don't you?"
He thought about that for a while. "I did. Not anymore. Don't mind me. This happens every thousand years or so." He looked at his foot, and then at me. He moved closer.
"Why are you here? Why are you telling me this?"
"Because you will listen. You will understand what it means to keep losing people I love."
"You can't talk to MacLeod?"
Methos' laugh was short and bitter. "I don't even want to see him tonight, not while he has Byron's blood on his hands. Byron was..."
"Byron was your student?"
"Yeah." He paused and looked straight at me. "Lover, too."
I nodded. "I'd suspected."
"That doesn't bother you? " He was entirely sober now, although he still had that fey look in his eyes.
"Not really, though I think it would bother Mac. I'm sure you've slept with other of your students." I shrugged.
"Yeah. But I was thinking more that...that Byron is...was...a man."
I blinked. "And *why* would I think that was a problem?"
"I never know what to think with men in this century - especially from *your* country. You are the most confusing lot I've ever dealt with. And Duncan is the most confusing of all of you." Methos was smiling, finally.
"He's not from my century. For that matter, he's not from my country. And he's not me."
"This is true. He isn't. He's..."
I smiled. "He's clueless. Deliberately clueless, I think. Although...I don't think he'd be shocked that you slept with Byron. Not that *he* would have done it."
"Oh, no. Not Duncan MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod." He picked up a beer bottle. "I'm tired of talking about that damn murdering...priggish..." He glared at the beer for a moment and put it down again. Then he looked at me. He reached out a hand to touch my shoulder. I bit my lip. "Ahhh, Joseph."
I touched his hand. "You need more than beer tonight."
"I don't know what I need. I need to find an anchor, maybe. Something to hold on to." He snorted. "Listen to me babble. I'd better really go."
"You don't have to go."
"I can't hold on to you. I can't hold on to *anyone*. You all...everyone of you...everyone of us. You all die, and leave me here alone. I don't need this."
"So? What are you going to do? Go on another thousand year killing spree, just to prove you don't need mortals?"
"Yeah, why not? So what if I shorten a few pathetic lives? So what if I don't bloody care about anything or anyone? Why should I care?" He sprang up from the couch and began pacing - making no move to put on his shoes.
"I don't know why you should care. But you do."
"I washed bloody Byron out of my life over a century ago. Damn it all. I just lost Alexa, I come close to losing Duncan every time he takes out that damn sword because of his stupid chivalry and...and there's *you*."
I narrowed my eyes. "Me?"
"If there was anyone I could hold onto, it'd be you. You're...there. Here. You understand. You don't...damn it, you don't *judge*. I'm sick to death of being judged."
"I'm a Watcher. I just observe."
"You don't just observe. You *care*. I know. I've been watching *you* watching *him*."
"He does that. He makes you act. Whether you want to, or not. And I thought we weren't talking about him."
"We're not. We're talking about you. And why I'm here."
"Why?" He walked to me and knelt on the floor beside me, looking straight into my eyes. The fey look was gone, but what replaced it made it impossible for me to breathe. "Why are you here?"
"I need to hold on to someone, and I need you. For now. For tonight."
I took his hand. It was graceful and hard and it trembled. "Just tonight?"
"I don't want to think past tonight. Past you. Help me, Joseph."
I'd received more romantic propositions, but none harder to refuse. I leaned forward and kissed his lips. He caught his breath in a sob and opened his mouth to mine. For a long time, our only contact was our lips and our hands, until I could stand it no longer. I wrapped my arms around him and brought him close before we broke apart.
My bed was close by. I know he undressed in seconds - I blinked and there he was, long and beautiful, no signs of his great age anywhere but in his eyes. He insisted on removing my clothing himself - and, later, when I was on the bed, my prostheses, running his hands over my stumps as he did. I protested.
"Shhh. They're you and you are beautiful." Still, he stopped and lied down next to me. I gathered him into my arms again. He was all slender strength and hidden power, like a spring under tension. I kissed his mouth again, and that tension was there, too, singing under my lips as it did beneath my hands.
He clutched at me, kissing me, devouring me as I stroked his body, trying to ease the tension or turn it into passion instead of hunger. Finally, out of breath, he lay back and allowed me to kiss him, to tease and tongue him from his feet...beautiful, slender feet...to his long, heavy penis to the nipples that darkened and became erect at my touch. I have played the human body as an instrument many times. His was supremely human. By the time I took him in my mouth, and he was delicious in my mouth, I had managed to transmute some of the tension.
His orgasm crashed through us both, but it didn't ease him. He shuddered in my arms.
"Take me, Joseph. Now. Hard, gentle, I don't care. I need to...need you...take me."
For a moment, I couldn't move. His voice was hoarse, cracked, and hungry, and I knew what it cost him to make such a statement. And then I felt him tremble.
"Yes. I will." I couldn't make my voice rise above a whisper, but driven by a wave of passion I could not control, I had to obey him.
I eased my way up body once again, turning him so he faced away from me. I spent a moment stroking the powerful muscles that ran down his back before reaching for a tube in my bedside table. My fingers brushed a packet of condoms as well, but I wouldn't need them now.
He sighed when I stroked him with my finger, and began to move against. He was so tight, so hot, so needy. Even as I prepared him, and he moaned at my touches, I wondered why he was almost virgin tight while his muscles skillfully contracted around my hand.
And then I got myself ready, shivering slightly at the feel of cool gel directly on me instead of through latex. He bent his leg, opening himself. "Now...just...now!"
I wanted to be gentle, but something in his voice wouldn't let me. Instead, I allowed him to pull me in in one motion. His bent leg wrapped itself around my stump and held me close as I clasped him to my chest and began to move. It had been a long time since I *felt* a man around me, felt the friction he held, felt his prostate as I hit it time and again. It was nearly too much, but I kept control, kept myself until Methos again gasped and cried out. I reached for his penis again, felt it hot and full of blood in my hands as I stroked it.
I heard him sob wordlessly as he came once again and I came after.
Eventually, I pulled out, and he turned around and I could see that his cheeks and eyes were dry and he pulled me close again and held me tightly.
"How the hell am I ever going to say good-bye to you?"
I had no answer for him.
Copyright 2000 Debra Fran Baker and NightRoads Associates