Fandom: Highlander, Duncan/Methos
Rating: PG-13
Archive: Yes.
Summary: Part of the events in "Methos," told from Duncan's point of view.

His hands are soft. Surprising that is so, since all the rest of him is firm -- muscle and sinew and bone of a man in training for uncounted years. But he is a scholar, I remember, a man who has not killed another Immortal for two hundred years.

Methos is a contradiction in terms. He appears small and young, a harmless thirty-year old man, an athlete in the body of a student, yet I have few doubts that he could be more sly than anyone I had ever met. He would have had to have been.

The way he moves -- it is another contradiction. He slides over the ground with utter complete sensuality, a walk that hints and suggests and pleads and promises. Yet he dresses in baggy clothes, sweaters that bring out the color of his dark eyes, unassuming things worn by a man who wishes to be forgotten.

He gets up from the ground without touching a hand to the floor, with the ease of a dancer. He walks and moves with infinite care to be unobtrusive. Yet, in the presence of those he trusts, and he trusts me, I know it, he is casual, quiet, gentle, speaking nothing without a purpose.

His words are filled with wit and wisdom, always, a bite of sharp-honed humor tinging through his every sentence. His eyes see everything. Nothing escapes him, not a whisper on the other side of the river, not a gesture made by others walking together, not the quick motion of a cat darting behind a pile of boxes in an alleyway. He is undistractable and unreadable -- qualities I would hope the oldest of our kind would have.

Five thousand years. Sometimes the weight of my four hundred years seems like forever, yet it is only a small part of how long he has lived. He has seen empires and world systems come and go, has recorded, no doubt, legends long forgotten, has been a thousand men.

But who is he? Who is the Methos I met today? Is he someone completely different than the man who was taken in by some nomadic family before written history, or is he the sum of his experiences?

And what does he really think of me? He told me he'd written about me in his journals, but that could mean nothing more than "Duncan MacLeod is rumored to live in Paris."

What could he have written of me? Quick mentions? Paragraphs trying to dissect my personality? A study of the way I fight? Sexual fantasies...? It really could be any of the above, or more that haven't occurred to me yet.

Methos, the oldest living immortal, is a puzzle. Five thousand years of living, and practically the first thing he does upon our second meeting is offer me his head.

Oh, the way he offered it! Like a lover caressing a beloved, he took my blade, pressing it to his throat, open invitation, sure offer, sensual as sunlight. Then he knelt before me, body arched into my sword, and I knew I could not destroy such a lovely being, could not put an end to the passion he denied but that I could see still inside him.

I could feel myself falling desperately in love with him, on that small street, with him kneeling before me, waiting for the blow. I could not let it fall. Instead -- I could not resist -- I leaned forward and kissed him lightly on the mouth, the faint taste of him surging through my senses deliciously. And then I walked away, leaving him face turned toward the sky, eyes closed.

END