Title: Wings of the Morning--Methos

Author: Figlia Della Musica

Series: Wings of the Morning 6/?

Pairing: Duncan/Methos

Timeframe: Whenever

Summary: Duncan and Methos finish their little talk

Warnings: slash, mush

Rating: G

Archive:   sure but just ask me first

Author’s comments: Now, I need some feedback. This could be the end of the series, or I could keep on going ad infinitum. 

Disclaimer: These gentlemen do not belong to me, unfortunately, and I don’t make any money off of this.  I’m just having some fun with them.

 

++++++++++

 

<<But what?>>

 

Damn it all, that has to be the number-one hardest question to answer, and it doesn’t help that I’m already so terrified I’m ready to snatch my hand back and run out the door.  I almost do.

 

But if I do that, I’ll never see Duncan again.  Oh, not that he won’t look for me, but it’s like what they say about falling off a horse.  The longer you wait before getting back on, the more afraid you get, until even the thought of a horse terrifies you.  If I leave, I’ll become more and more afraid of my feelings for my Highlander, until I disappear to Bora Bora at the least sign of him.  I’ll spend the rest of my life painfully aware of his absence—the Double Quickening, that odd link in our life forces, will see to that—but I won’t be able to do a damned bloody thing about it.

 

I have to say something.  Even if it’s just something simple.  But I can’t.  Too much depends on this. 

 

I’ve had this odd ability from time to time—not exactly sensing the future, but knowing if something’s important.  I felt it at various points throughout my life, times when I could have changed something.  A sense of balancing, like a circus clown that balances a spinning plate on a pole—everything dances on a razor edge, and what I say or don’t say, do or don’t do, will change the course of my life, Duncan’s life, maybe more, forever. 

 

“Methos?”  The way he says my name—a legato-marcato on the first syllable, accented but held out for full value, and the largo diminuendo on the second, drawing the o and s out for as long as possible.  It sounds like a caress.  For the last fifteen hundred years, so few people have known my true name, and suddenly here’s my Highlander, not only knowing and saying my name (which is special in and of itself—he’s never understood how much trust that is) but making it sound like a stroke, the sensual motion of sound on ear, skin on skin, so similar.  Even when he says my name quickly, in worry or anger or anything else, he can’t help drawing that second syllable out, just a little. 

 

I have to answer him.  I can feel, in my head, that balancing plate starting to tip—I have to hurry and get the pole directly under it before it falls and shatters. 

 

“But be sure, MacLeod,” I say slowly.  “Be very, very sure this is what you want.  I’m not going to change habits that’ve kept me alive for five thousand years unless you’re willing to make a similar commitment.”  I’m in too deep.  If he decides in a year he doesn’t want this anymore, I’ll be left to pick up the shattered pieces of my heart, and I can’t do that.  I’ve done it too many times already. 

 

I fully expect him to pull back, to say we should go more slowly.  I force myself to expect that and that only, because this will hurt enough without my hopes up. 

 

“Methos,” Duncan says slowly, and I tense in anticipation of rejection, “I love you.  I want you to understand that fully, and everything that it means.”  Oh hell.

 

“MacLeod, if you’re about to say you don’t want that much, just say so.  Don’t draw it out.”  I half-stand up, ready to leave, but I’ve forgotten that my hand is between his, and he pulls me back down.

 

“Methos!”  Then he says, more softly, “Dinna leave.  I canna take it.  My heart canna take it.”  My Highlander closes his eyes and presses my hand to his forehead, begging me, and I’m shaking now, from too much emotion, fear and hope and love and . . . but that last is all I really need to say, isn’t it?  Love.