This story contains explicit scenes of sex between consenting adult men.  If you are under age or don’t care for this, LEAVE NOW.  As usual, characters from Highlander:  the Series belong to Davis-Panzer et alia ; I only play with them from time to time without any compensation.  No harm; no foul.  Anyone or anything new, however, is mine (left-overs again).  Beta-read by Elaine and jam-wired.  Thank you, merci beaucoup, tapadh leat, gracias, danke, grazie, spazebo, arigato.  Any errors are mine alone.

Paris, May 1997:  Dawn.

N o place on earth could be more beautiful than Paris on a spring morning.  The swiftly flowing Seine reflected the blue of the sky, the trees were in bloom, and all the city was in love. The barge shifted at her moorings, but it was not the subtle movements of living on the water that disturbed the sleeping Duncan Macleod.  He tossed in the big bed, his powerful body and mind gripped by an even stronger dream — nightmare.

The old racetrack is full of fog, damp from the leaking roof.  The demons are multiplying; now there are two of each of them:  Kronos as Methos remembers him, tattooed and armored, Horton, Richie with blood-red eyes.  They circle me, taunting, laughing, daring me to destroy them, telling me I can’t kill them all.  I strike and parry, lunging at enemies who aren’t there, Hideo’s katana slicing the air before it meets steel; the familiar horrible clash echoes from the hard concrete walls.  A shape comes at me.  Another demon?  I see the glint of light on steel.  My sword arm moves as it’s been trained for four hundred years.  I strike, and this time my blade does not meet steel but flesh and bone.

It is day and my sword is at Willie Kingsley’s throat, his eyes begging for his life.  I pull the blade away and I am fighting my first student, Marek, in a room full of computers.  I am in a monastery, cutting my hair with a knife, sawing off lock after lock, then throwing the knife to sink to its hilt in the chest of Horton.  “I am the man you cannot kill,” he says and the demons are back — foes I cannot sense but can only see what they wish — illusion after illusion but their blades cut deep and draw blood as if real. I am hobbled until I can heal and I strike blindly in the fog.  My sword cleaves flesh.  An odd French dwarf throws a ball past me and catches it singing,  “Richie-killer, Richie-killer, Richie-killer,” as I sit, unmoving.  “I am everything, therefore I am nothing…”

I kneel, unarmed, an enemy’s sword at my neck, the smell of fuel oil and blood in the dry dusty air.  I kneel again in the fog and lift my sword to a shadowy figure.  I lay the sword in a trunk in an empty barge.

A car blows up in my face and I know a friend has died.  I turn and drop spare change into Joe’s hat.  I fence with a mortal as good as any of Us, and I lay down my sword before Liam O'Rourke.  It’s Kronos and I strike at him.  “I am the end of time!” he cries as he disappears.  My sword swings again and it’s Richie not the demon.  Oh my god, what have I done?

I lift my sword to Methos, a plea for absolution.  “Absolutely not.”  “Take it.”

Kneeling at O'Rourke’s feet, my sword out of reach, a gun at Joe’s head, another sword at Amanda’s throat.  “Even Immortals die,” Methos tells me.  “Not because of me. Not anymore.”  I close my eyes as Liam’s sword begins its downward stroke.

Macleod jumped out of bed, instantly in a defensive crouch, the katana immediately in his hand.  He scanned the barge, his eyes not focusing at the furniture.  His left hand pushed the long hair from his face, and his fingers gripped and pulled at it as he remembered cutting it off.  Again he scanned the room.  Seeing nothing and no one, he listened as the running shower, no more than white noise, was shut off, leaving only the silence and his rapid, ragged breathing.

He closed his eyes for a moment, centering, controlling his heart, his lungs, and when he could speak he asked, “Who — who’s there?”  His voice was only a raspy whisper with no strength behind it. In the silence he realized he was naked, and the bed he had sprung from had been shared.  The sheets were pulled loose from the mattress and stained, one damp spot still darker than the rest. Before he could cover himself the other walked out of the bathroom.  Macleod, aware of the Immortal’s presence before he saw the towel-wrapped body, recognized the long legs, the slim hips and strong shoulders, and he knew the other towel hid short, red-gold hair and bright blue eyes.

“Richie?”

The other scrubbed the towel over his hair before pulling the terry cloth away from the so familiar head and face.  “Hey, Mac, you up already?”  His hair was disheveled, his eyes and his smile bright.  “I didn’t want to wake you…”

“Richie?” Macleod repeated, his voice stronger.  He shook his head, disoriented, trying to make sense of the dream he remembered so vividly.  The vision of swinging his sword through Richie’s neck filled his mind, and he saw a dark headstone standing alone on a grassy hillside.

Richie Ryan
22 years
Friend

“… but I thought I’d take a shower before…”

“You’re alive,” he whispered, not sure what to believe — his eyes or his memories.  The memories were too real, too strong.  These were memories of reality, not of a dream.  He could remember the dampness on his skin, the smell of blood in the air.  He could still feel the power of the Quickening that had filled him after he had taken Richie’s head.  He yet felt Richie’s presence in his own soul along with all the others.  The memories sorted themselves out in his mind, no longer dreamlike.  They were solid, strong memories that couldn’t possibly be true.  Months.  A year.  Two years.

“Yeah,” Richie answered, spreading his arms and turning around, the towel still wrapped tightly around the slim hips.  “Everything in perfect working order.”  A hint of a blush colored his face.  “Even after last night.”  He smiled broadly and the blush deepened, extending down his chest.  “You do remember last night?”

Macleod looked at the bed, at the evidence of a night of passion, and was suddenly very aware of his nakedness.  “Yeah,” he almost lied. I just don’t remember the same last night he does.

“And Mac,” Richie went on.  “Unless you’re planning to take my head, you can put that away.”

He saw himself swing and take Richie’s head in the dark, damp racetrack as the vision was repeated, and it seemed so real he almost cried out.  Macleod stared at the sword still in his hand and carefully slid it into its place beside the bed.  “No,” he said almost too quickly, then recovered a bit.  “No,” he repeated, this time the words an assurance instead of an admonition.  A strange sensation filled him, one he hadn’t felt since Methos had taken him to the sacred spring outside Paris.  He felt Richie’s Quickening seep from him like blood from a wound.  A mere moment passed, and the presence he had cherished for two years was gone.  Completely gone, as if it had never been part of him.  As if he had never taken Richie’s head.  He ran his hand through his hair once more, again surprised at its length.  Didn’t I cut it off?

“What’s the matter, Mac?” Richie asked, his voice full of concern.  He rubbed the towel over his chest and arms as he walked toward Macleod.  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”  He tossed the towel on the couch and grabbed up his watch, slipping it over his hand and settling it on his wrist before he unselfconsciously dropped the towel from his hips and stepped into his briefs and jeans.  Soon that towel joined the other, and the younger man zipped his way into the nearly skin-tight jeans.

Macleod stared at the momentarily revealed body, the sight of Richie’s flaccid cock and heavy balls enough to bring a stirring to his own groin and he knew who his bed partner had been.  The images of their two bodies passionately entwined surged through his mind.

“Maybe I have.”  “I can bring anybody back, Macleod,” Horton — Ahriman — tells me, and Richie — an even younger Richie — says, “I never thought the good guys could die.”

“Mac, what’s wrong?”

Macleod shook his head again, trying to settle the conflicting memories and images in his mind.  Though he could no longer feel Richie, he still remembered the events of the past two years.  He sank down to sit on the edge of the bed, elbows on his knees, head in his hands.  The dream memories were stronger now, and he was convinced that he had taken Richie’s head, that he had given up his own life to O’Rourke.

Richie leapt up the steps to the bedroom, still barefoot and bare-chested.

“That was a very old bottle of wine we drank last night, but that can’t hurt Us , can it?”  He stood in front of Macleod and tried to make eye contact.  “Right, Mac?”

“What happened last night?”  There was a tremor in his voice, an uncertainty about his own sanity.  He remembered two entire years since taking Richie’s head.  Two years filled with grief, anger, and pain that eventually had given way to acceptance and the serenity that had come from the soul-searching meditation he’d learned, more fighting, old friends, and conflicting memories of Amanda and Tessa, Joe and Methos.  Not a great deal of time by Immortal standards, but a significant stock of experiences and events that, he realized now, might have never happened.

Richie put a hand on Macleod’s bare shoulder, squeezing just a little.  “We went out on the town — my last night in Paris, remember?”  He sat on the edge of the bed next to Macleod and went on.  “Then we came back here and you opened the bottle of wine I brought from Baron LeMartín.”  He kept his hand on Macleod’s shoulder, his fair skin contrasting with the darker, almost olive tone of the Scotsman’s.  “Mac,” he went on, his voice low and intimate.  “Whatever it is, I’m with you.  You know that, don’t you?’

Richie’s words echoed in Macleod’s mind, the same words he remembered before…  He closed his eyes against the memory and reached his hand to cover Richie’s, holding it to his shoulder, feeling the difference in temperature between the two men.  “Yeah,” he nodded.  “I know.”  There was a silence then between them as the vow was made and accepted.  Richie tilted his head, trying to make eye contact with the Highlander, then reached his hand to Macleod’s face to bring their mouths together in a loving but chaste kiss.

“Always, Mac,” Richie whispered against his lover’s lips, the vibrations of his words a caress, another kiss.  The moment stretched on, brown eyes locked with blue, until Richie’s voice broke the spell.  “Duncan,” he said softly, not quite a question, almost a plea, and Macleod knew Richie called him Duncan only when he wanted him — needed him.

He didn’t know who kissed whom this time, but their lips pressed together, both mouths opening to the other immediately.  They moved in unison, Macleod lying back as Richie bore him down onto the bed, the younger man straddling his lover’s hips to bring their bodies as close as possible.

Richie’s rough denim rubbed against Macleod’s rising erection, the abrasiveness almost too much to bear.  He must have made a sound, though he couldn’t remember, because in a flash Richie lifted his hips away so the irritating jeans, so recently donned, could be removed.  Richie was aroused too, and the twin pillars met between their bodies as they returned to their soft, loving kisses, their tongues probing, tasting and stimulating each other in tandem.

If Richie would kiss me like this forever, the Highlander thought, I could forget the dream.   He pulled Richie’s tongue even further into his mouth, sucking on warm, pliant flesh, drinking in the fresh, clean scent of soap and musk and Richie.  He sighed to himself as Richie’s tongue moved around his teeth, then relaxed back to let Richie take the lead this time.  He still had no memory of the events Richie remembered from the night before, but the evidence proved it had been an active and passionate time.

Richie’s hands moved down the Highlander’s body, caressing and teasing, randomly switching from fingertips to nails and back again, giving Macleod a series of changing sensations.  He tweaked one dark nipple, rolling it between his thumb and forefinger, pulling and twisting in time with Duncan’s gasping breath.  “Oh, you like that?” the younger man asked, his voice light and teasing.

Macleod’s only answer was to pull Richie’s head back to his, capturing the boy’s lower lip between his own.  He sucked and pulled it into his mouth before running his tongue across the swelling flesh, back and forth, upper and lower lips in turn.  Then tentatively, almost demurely, the tip dipped past the white teeth to meet the waiting warmth within.  As he tasted his lover once again he felt the pressure in his groin beginning to build, and he moved his hips, his erection rubbing against Richie’s, the two shafts straining against each other, the friction between them building.  He held the golden head firmly, keeping Richie’s luscious mouth just where he wanted it.  Forever, he thought. I could do this forever.

But Richie didn’t let him go on.  He leaned his head closer to Macleod’s, taking control again, and pressed their lips together in a strong, demanding kiss.  At the same time he wiggled his hips, grinding and pushing himself against the Scot’s rock-hard abdominal muscles.  When his tongue demanded entry, it was not to taste, not to caress at all, but to possess, a reminder to Macleod of how things had been between them before — before he had killed his student.  His friend.  His lover.

His memories refreshed, Macleod responded without hesitation.  He clasped his arms behind Richie’s back and held him close, then with one heave turned them both over so now he lay full length over Richie, their erections still trapped between them, their mouths still joined in the deep kiss.  His teeth closed lightly on the penetrating flesh and he pulled back, a quick nip just before releasing the tip.  “My turn,” he said as he bent his head to kiss and lick and caress Richie’s neck, then his shoulder.  He bit at the freckled skin, raising welts that quickly disappeared, then moved to swirl the tip of his tongue around the nub of one rosy nipple, his fingers busy on the other.  He heard Richie’s gasps, his sighs, but didn’t stop for them, relentlessly pushing onward to his ultimate goal, the hard, throbbing manhood that rose from the golden curls.

“Yes, yes,” he heard from the head of the bed, and raised his head from nuzzling Richie’s navel.

“You want me to go on?” he teased, then dipped his tongue into the depression and circled it back out.

Long fingers tangled in his hair, grasping and pushing.  “Oh, god, yes.” Richie gasped.  “Now,” he pleaded.  “Now, please.”

“Anything you want…”  Macleod pulled away and sat back on his heels, his knees between Richie's thighs.  The boy's entire body was ready, yearning for him, hands clenching the sheets, his chest heaving with the quick, panting breaths of arousal.  He lifted Richie's knees, and the slim hips tilted.

Now.  Macleod nearly heard the word in his mind as he looked up and down the length of the young body once more.

Now it is.  He lowered his head and slowly ran the tip of his tongue up the throbbing vein on the underside of Richie’s erection, then back to the base, and up again, each time avoiding the even more sensitive head, a drop of glistening fluid leaking from the tip.  He slid his arms under the muscular thighs and grasped just where leg became hip, digging his strong fingers into the lean flesh, and repeated his journey up and down the straining shaft, his tongue firm and teasing.  Back at the base, it softened, laving the ultra sensitive spot between cock and balls.  He sucked at the velvety pouch, drawing the heavy balls into his mouth.  He held tightly as the slim hips bucked beneath him, and he knew how close Richie’s climax was.

Macleod released his grip on Richie’s hips, caressing and massaging everywhere he could reach, keeping his head close, his breath another stimulation on the dampened flesh. He brought one hand to the base of Richie’s cock and circled it lightly with his fingers, stroking gently up and down and around.  He caught the drop of fluid with his fingers and spread it over the rosy end before tasting it, lick by lick like an ice cream cone.  He slid his mouth over the whole of the head, catching the ridge behind his lips, pulling and at the same time swirling his tongue around the still weeping tip.  His fingers firmly around the base, Macleod angled his head so he could take Richie’s full length into this mouth and throat, and he slowly slid down the shaft, swallowing to open his throat.  He felt Richie’s fingers in his hair again, pushing on his head, begging him to continue, to finish.

It was a simple technique, up and down, up and down, but Macleod was its master, and soon Richie’s shoulders and head were thrashing, the younger man anxious for release.  Macleod could feel it begin, the tightening of the abdominal muscles, the tensing of the buttocks, and just as the first spasm started, his finger probed at the tight opening, and with just that much more stimulation, Richie poured his essence into Macleod’s mouth.

The Highlander swallowed greedily, then sucked every drop he could from the softening cock before releasing it, covering it with soft, gentle kisses.  He was nearly ready himself, but waited a moment for Richie’s breathing to quiet.  “Where’s the oil?” he asked, his voice husky and low.

Without a word Richie reached under the pillow for a half full bottle of massage oil and gave it to his lover.  While Macleod spread the oil on his own erection, Richie stuffed a pillow under his hips, offering himself again.  Another moan escaped his lips when Macleod rubbed the oil around and into him.  First one finger, then two, and then…

Macleod knew the agony of waiting, but he also knew the ecstasy of completion.  He breathed deeply as he pressed himself into the young man, using every bit of control he had learned in four hundred years to keep from slamming into the hot, tight channel.  It seemed to take forever, but as soon as he had sheathed himself, he drew back, mimicking the same in and out technique he’d used with his mouth.  He was close, he knew, and it wouldn’t be long before he could no longer control himself, but he wanted to make it last as long as he could — not only for himself, but also for the boy.

“But what about the boy?  He’ll have to be watched.” Connor’s voice echoed in a distant corner of Macleod’s mind as every moment he had ever spent with Richie came flooding back.  He was lost in the rhythm of their love, and his thrusts became quicker and more forceful, until finally he pushed as deeply as he could into the fair, freckled body and let go his control.  It seemed to take forever as he spent himself, then he collapsed against Richie’s chest.
 
 

Later that morning.

R ichie was sitting at the bar, a cup of steaming coffee in his hands, when he heard steps on the gangplank.  He stood and cocked his head, then with a shake no he relaxed, leaning with his back to the bar.

“Ahoy there,” a familiar voice rang out as the door opened and Joe Dawson swung his feet over the door’s lip, then made his way down the stairs.  Richie was too good a friend to offer any assistance to the Watcher.  As he reached the bottom of the stairs, Macleod appeared, a towel over his head, at the top of the stairway.

“Joe.”  His greeting was a statement, not a question.

“Hey, Macleod.  Beautiful morning, ain’t it?”

“’Morning, Dawson.”

“Hi, Rich.  I didn’t expect to see you in Paris.  Aren’t you dead?”

“Yeah.  That’s why I’m leaving.”  He pointed to the half-filled duffel bag on the couch.

Joe looked, then gestured to the cup in Richie’s hands.  “You got any more of that coffee?”

Still standing on the higher platform of the entry, Macleod tied the sash of his robe tightly around his waist.  “What’s up, Joe?”  His bare feet slapped down the steps and he joined the other two men around the coffee pot.  He waited while Richie poured a cup for Joe and nodded to the offer of a cup.  “Please,” he added to Richie under his breath, then drank most of the steaming hot liquid straight down, oblivious to the temporary damage to his tongue and the inside of his mouth.

The mortal was more careful with the hot coffee; he sipped and nodded, then put it down to cool.  “I just wanted to let you know I’m going back to the States.”

“Alone in Paris,” Macleod mused sarcastically.  “What will I do with myself?”

“I was going to come by the bar and say goodbye,” Richie explained.

“No, you weren’t,” Macleod warned.  “Maurice will be there, and he still thinks you’re dead.”

“Right.”  Richie nodded, acknowledging his error.  It would be better not to risk being seen by anyone else who could recognize him.  “I gotta get back to where I don’t have to worry who sees me.”

Joe shook his head at the exchange between the two Immortals, a bewildered smile on his face.  It had taken a long time to become accustomed to speaking of dead as a temporary state, and the ease at which Immortals discussed whether or not they were dead somewhere or had died somewhere else still amazed him.  “What’re you going to do?”

“I don’t know.”  He looked at Macleod for permission.  “Open the dojo again?”

The Highlander barely heard Richie’s question.  There was something about Joe’s going back to the States.  Something he remembered from his dream — from before. “Sure.”  His voice was distant.  “Whatever you want.”

“Can I stay at the loft?”  The smile on Richie’s face said he knew he was pushing.

“Yeah.  Why not?”  Macleod drank down the rest of his coffee and poured more. “Joe,” he said.  “What year is it?”  He tried to make it sound casual, as though he had asked about the weather.  The question had been preying at his mind all morning, and he had to know. Which was the dream?  Richie’s death?  Or this?

“After four hundred years, Duncan Macleod of the Clan Macleod has finally lost it.” Richie laughed.

“No,” he said, and his look silenced the younger man.  “I mean it, Joe.  What year is it?  What’s the date?”  The hot shower had refreshed him, but he still held two years of terrible memories in his mind.

“It’s nineteen-ninety-seven.  May twenty-third.”  The Watcher leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially, “Friday.”

The Highlander took a deep breath, held it a moment and let it out slowly, deciding to tell the whole story.  It’s the only way they’ll understand any of it…   “When I woke up this morning, I thought it was May of nineteen-ninety-nine .  I have memories — vivid, clear memories of the last two years.”

“So you know what’s going to happen for the next two years?”  Richie smirked at the prospect of two years of sure-thing bets.  “The Kentucky Derby?  The World Series?”  One glance at Macleod’s serious look and the larcenous grin on his face faded quickly.

“No.  Everything is different, starting with the night we went to the opera.”

“Last Friday,” Richie reminded him.

“Yeah.  What do you remember about that night?”

“We ran into a guy I’d raced with, and he recognized me. I convinced him I was my brother David , but he really freaked.”  He looked back and forth between Joe and Macleod.  “So I decided to go back to the States.”

“What do you remember, Mac?”  Joe’s voice was calm, not patronizing.  He tested the coffee and drank deeply.

“We came back from the opera — but an old man, Jason Landry, was waiting here for us — for me .  He said the thousand-year evil was coming and I was to fight it.”  Macleod had to force the words from his mouth.  He had avoided telling this tale for two years, never putting the memories into words.  And now, confessing the memory — the dream — to Joe and Richie made him feel like it had just happened all over again.  As uncomfortable as it made him to tell this story, he knew he had to go on; he had to tell it all.  He took a deep breath and went on.  “And then I saw Horton.”

“Horton’s dead,” Joe stated coldly.

“I know.  I killed him, remember?”  “I’m the man you cannot kill.”  Macleod remembered what it was about Joe’s return to Chicago.  “Wait a minute. Joe, did you, are you, shipping his body back to the States?”

The color rose immediately in Dawson’s face. “I wasn’t going to tell you, but yeah.  How did you know?”

“I remember it happening, two years ago.”

“More like last Saturday.”

“Whoa.  Hold on here,” Richie broke in.  “What happened to the old man?”

“He died.  The Evil — Ahriman—– killed him.”  He breathed deeply several times.  “Then I started seeing Horton more, and Kronos too.  They taunted me, teased me.  I thought I was going crazy.”  Saying the words brought the memories back, and he saw Horton and Kronos like visions, first in the barge, then at the racetrack.  His breath quickened; his heart raced.

“Yeah, I can imagine,” Richie lied.

Macleod forced the visions away and looked at Joe.  “You and Methos thought I was losing it.  You thought I’d gone insane.”

Joe lowered his head, breaking eye contact with Macleod.

The Highlander turned back to the young Immortal, and his face lit up with the sheer pleasure of looking at his lover.  “But Richie offered to help — to fight whatever it was with me.”  “I’ll be right there with you.”  He heard Richie’s words once again, and the scenes of fighting the demons and taking Richie’s head filled his mind, casting a dark cloud over the brief brightness from looking at Richie.

“What is it, Mac?” Richie asked.  He tilted his head, trying to see deeper into Macleod’s shadowed eyes.  “What happened?”

Macleod reached his hand to stroke Richie’s cheek, breaking his own rules about public displays of affection between them.  He saw Richie’s eyes widen at the unexpected touch, then dart to Joe and back before he smiled and returned the caress.

The Scot tore his eyes away and looked at Dawson.  There was no surprise in the Watcher’s face at the exchange between the two men, and Macleod understood their love had never been a secret from their friend — his Watcher.

“Duncan, what happened?” Richie’s voice was softer, but Macleod could hear an undertone of apprehension.

He knows something went terribly wrong, he realized. I can’t say this — not to his face. I can’t tell him I killed him.  He concentrated on holding Joe’s gaze and tried to make himself forget Richie was in the room.  Impossible, he knew, but he’d try.  “Richie died,” he said simply.

“Like — ”  Richie drew his index finger across his throat  “ — phffft — died?”

Grateful for the bit of levity Richie’s question afforded, Macleod answered, “Yeah.  Like — phffft.”  As soon as he repeated Richie’s onomatopoeia, the somber mood descended again.  “I went away.  It took me a year to recover.  To prepare.”  He spoke in short, choppy phrases, unable to make his thoughts flow more smoothly.

“Mac,” Richie interrupted.

“Then I came back.”  He continued speaking only to his Watcher, still trying to ignore Richie’s presence, as if he could.

“Mac, who —”  The boy’s voice was insistent, and he pulled at the older man’s shoulder to turn him around.

“And I stopped him,” Macleod finished, his eyes still on Dawson.

“Who?

“Ahriman.  Evil.”  He answered only Dawson’s question.

Richie took Macleod’s face between his hands and forced eye contact.  “Mac, who killed me?”

Even trapped between the palms of Richie’s hands, Macleod could shake his head, trying to make the visions, the memories, go away.

“You don’t know?”

Only a whisper escaped Macleod’s lips.  “I know.”

“Are you going to tell me?”  In exasperation, Richie dropped his hands from Macleod’s face.  He took two steps away from the Highlander and turned back angrily.  “Who took — takes my head?”

Macleod looked back and forth between the two men, not wanting to say the words, thinking if he never said them, the events would never occur.  But he knew he had to tell them.  He had been honest with them so far; he had to be honest with them now.  “I did,” he whispered, the words themselves somehow liberating, freeing him from the awful secret only he carried.

Cold coffee slurped out of the cup as Richie slammed it down on the counter and strode across the wooden floor to his duffel bag.  He stuffed the last remaining items, his favorite dark blue tee shirt and his shaving kit, into the firmly packed canvas.  He yanked on the drawstrings and tied them off. “I guess it’s a good thing I’m going.”

He shouldered the bag and started towards the door to be stopped by the Highlander’s hand on his arm.  He pulled away, his blue eyes flashing at Macleod.  “It’s not like you haven’t tried before.”  His voice was grim; his face mirrored his betrayal.

“This time you only owe me a shirt.”  Richie wipes the blood away in that little round mirror in the loft.  That was Garrick — not me!  Then we’re in the dojo.  “What’re you doing, Mac?”

“You’re a smart little boy, you figure it out.”  Is that my voice?

“Whatever happened, Mac, we can work it out.”

“Sorry, wrong number.”

“Just tell me why.  The teacher kills the pupil?  Is that what this is all about?  Is it because there can be only One?  Is that it?

“Hahahaha.  That’s as good a reason as any.”

The room spun around as he pulled himself out of the visions — the memories.  “I didn't mean…”  Richie looked at him expectantly, anger still in his eyes.

“I was being manipulated, used.”  He dropped his hand away from Richie’s arm.  You can go if you want to, he thought, if you need to.

“I wanted to die, too.”

“Absolutely not”.

 “Take it.”

“But I had to go on.”  He paced back to the kitchen counter, the echoes of the phantom two years nearly deafening.

“If your — death — was to have any meaning, I had to live — to defeat the evil that used me to kill you.”

He looked at Richie, then Joe, and back to Richie.  He tried to send the love he felt for the young Immortal across the room with just his smile.  “But it looks like all that never happened.”

Macleod could see Richie’s chest rising and falling, and he knew the boy was trying to control his emotions.  His anger.  The Scot could read the feeling of betrayal in the blue eyes, the same look he’d seen only last year when Richie had finally returned to Seacouver.  “I’ll never let anything like that happen, Rich.”  He spoke directly to his lover, ignoring the Watcher. He shook his head in emphasis.  “Never.”

Richie’s adam’s apple rose and fell as the boy swallowed.  At first the nod was barely perceptible, but it increased in amplitude as a broad grin stretched across the face.  The brightness Macleod craved to see again came back to the blue eyes.  “I guess I’ll have to take your word for that.”

Joe looked back and forth between the two men.  He had no trouble imagining the force of emotion that bridged the space between them, like the lightning of a quickening between two swords.  “Well, now that you two have made up, I’ll be going.”  The seed of voyeurism deep within him wanted to stay, but he repressed it as he always did.  He reached behind Macleod to place his empty cup on the bar, then turned to go.  At the base of the steps to the entry, he turned back to Richie.  “Let me know when your flight gets in; I’ll meet you.”

Richie pulled his eyes away from Macleod’s and looked at Dawson, the return to reality disorienting.  “I’m supposed to leave today.”  He looked back at Macleod.  “Mac?”

Macleod knew he had to say the words, out loud, and in front of Dawson.  He knew what he wanted to say, he knew what his heart felt, but still they were hard to pronounce.  “Don’t go, Richie.  Stay.  With me.”  He reached out his hand, beckoning, entreating the younger man to return.  To stay.

“My ticket’s non-refundable,” Richie muttered without conviction, and Macleod knew he had made up his mind to stay, at least for a while.

“I’ll pay for it.”  Macleod could hardly keep his expression under control.  His heart seemed to swell in his chest; his face felt hot, and a broad smile pulled at this mouth.

Watching the exchange between the two men, Dawson knew it was time to leave.  He climbed the steps and turned his head from the landing to see Richie drop the duffel bag to the floor and cross the narrow room to take Macleod’s hand.  He averted his eyes before he saw anything he would have to put in the Chronicles and let himself out.

Macleod and Richie stood face to face, both hands clasped with the other’s.  “I could stay another couple days, I guess.”  Richie’s voice was thickening, husky with emotion.  “Maybe I won’t go out much.”

“Yeah,” was all Macleod could say before his mouth was captured in a long, deep kiss.

Later, the Highlander lay nearly asleep, Richie’s head tucked in the hollow of his shoulder.  Brown eyes closed, his lips found the younger man’s forehead and touched it in a brief kiss, then whispered his promise against the freckled skin.  “Never again.”

This page last updated
21 August 2002

© 2000 Emma Keigh