So the sex comes at the beginning, slam on the table:

Slammed on his back on the table (Methos is), hair in the butter dish, butter, he notes, hands gripping the shaking sides for leverage while Mac jerks away his jeans, up, off and away, rough and roaring and towering in snowy boots laced to his knees; Mac towering between his legs now, Methos's knees over Mac's shoulders, Methos's heels pounding Mac's flannel plaid back, and Mac spreading Methos, spitting him, thumbs digging under him. Stars and sparks behind his eyelids and he bounces as he's banged.

There, that and that again. It's a fine hard shag, a good wring out the old, ring in the new year fuck.

So now they can talk, now they can breathe and see straight, and pick the broken biscuits from their hair.

"Joe says hello."

"He could have called."

They're naked on the bed, sprawled and lolling, louche as a Tom of Finland postcard. The lights are out, the lamp rocked awry. There's an iron stove open with a fire in the grate, light licking planes and muscles and throwing enough heat to toast their toes. Mac's cabin, Mac's island, his back-of-beyond retreat, and he knows damn well how bad reception is out here in a storm. Some prickliness there that Methos will mine later. Later, after he's had his fill. Mac's hand on his thigh, now, heavy and broad, is more to the point.

"The hell. Hello says me, then. Happy Birthday, Merry Christmas. Happy New Year."

"Not for hours, yet. You're looking fit."

Methos laughs and slaps Mac's stomach and leaves his hand there, for the pleasure of it. Fine golden skin, hair curling under his palm. He twists a finger in the navel. "You're bulging like a wrestler. Working out?" It's a silly question to the man who always trained like an athlete, like a warrior. It's a sane question to a man who's hardened up like an athlete. Like a warrior.

"Chopping wood and hauling water." Mac smiles. Nothing tightens under Methos's palm or eyes. "It's quiet out here. No one around." And he slides his hand up Methos's thigh until his knuckles brush his sac, and Methos sighs. Ice rattles against the windowpanes.

"I joined a gym." -- Mac laughs at him, jiggling his knuckles. --"Pool, steam room, masseur. Came with the condo. Reminds me of the old days."

"Babylon?"

"New York." Methos rolls his eyes and Mac's hand expands and wanders. He sighs, again, and remembers Pompeii and strigels skimming oil from his hips.

"When did you live in New York?"

"Eighties. Seventies. Nineties. Twenties, for a while; Seventies, again."

"Connor was there, for most of then. I stayed with him. It's strange we never met. Connor gets around."

"Strange," says Methos, purring. He closes his eyes and arches his back under Mac's fondling grasp.

"It's strange we never met in Paris, you living there so long. You knowing Darius and Joe and Amanda." The fondling becomes a tug and Methos's purr becomes a growl.

"Good man," he says, baring teeth. He spreads himself, clenching fingers in Mac's belly and the bed. "Amanda doesn't like to share."

"You weren't screwing them all." It's more a question than not, mostly in fun and counterpoint to what his furrowing fingers and thumb are up to. Buttery yet.

"If I tell you I was, in...ah...in great detail, with illuminating demonstrations of technique, will you keep doing that?" He likes it, being handled, lazy devil; he settles an arm behind his head, he slides his hand from Mac's stomach down, down to squeeze a nicely thickened cock. Cock, he popped on his mental tongue. Cock MacCock of the Clan MacCock, and a damn long time coming to his...ah...

So now comes the flashback, while Mac plays and Methos's vision blurs.

Rebecca glowed in the honey light of late afternoon. She was also annoyingly luminous by moonlight. Methos ignored her offered cup of chocolate and stared out the window. He was bored, skulking here like a new-molted crab, between homes, between names. He was waiting for the unfamiliar Immortal to leave the garden and Amanda's attentive company, to leave her free to make a third at cards. "She's fond of this one?"

Rebecca rustled, unseen, behind him; a shrug, or release of the chocolate pot. "He amuses her. A bit young yet, a bit rough; a good heart."

"Like a tree. She'll swing from his branches and come in dribbling bark." He frowned at the brown locks over broad shoulders in an unfashionable doublet. Feeling the arrow of his disapproval, possibly, the man looked up. Methos saw red, laughing lips, a powerful brow, and sharp eyes; eyes that hadn't found him, yet. "Unlikely. Unimpressive. What's his name?"

"Unimportant. My dear, he's leaving soon. Play a hand with me."

"You're too honest." Methos lingered by the window, stubbornly. "Amanda cheats. She's more entertaining to outwit."

"We'll play without rules; would that divert you?" She moved behind him, she laid her long white hand against his back.

Amanda never made a third for cards. Rebecca never told him Duncan's name. He drew it from the gardener and filed it away. Just in case.

The second time he saw Duncan MacLeod... but the vision shatters under the press of the present. So now we're back.

"Yes! Oh, yes! Oh, more!" Mac's fingers are stuffed up where they give good value now, sending jolts of lightning through his frame. Methos twists and presses down and arches up, his stiff dingus bobbing, jigging like a Harlequin on a stick. More, the greedy bastard wants more: "Your mouth, your mouth on me," he moans, and scratches nails across Mac's breast. Mac's cock is Mac's business now; he's that lost in his own sensation. It's all right. Mac likes it when he begs, likes to play him like a drum, likes to do things to him. It's sharp as revenge, sometimes.

Mac drives a thrust straight from his elbow that near separates Methos's ears from his head. And then, Methos's hands wrapped around his wrist, he stops. "Paris," he says.

"The...Hell!" howls Methos. Mac's wrist is like iron, his fingers rods, as Methos twists around them, as Mac draws them out, out and away. Up on his elbows, Methos is now, glaring at red lips and sharp brown eyes.

"Why didn't we meet in Paris? Earlier than we did?" Mac wipes his fingers on his thigh.

"I'll cut you up and sell you as bait! Who knows? Who gives a damn? Who said you were finished here?"

"Need permission, do I?" He grins, he sits up on the bed, he reaches for the robe hanging on the headboard post. "I missed dinner because of you; I'm hungry as a bear."

Lust, anger, frustration, and lust: Methos snaps his mouth shut. "Hungry? Swallow this!" He grabs his throbby, lonely dingus in his fist and gives it a shake at Mac's stiff and hardy cock, waving merrily back from the open robe. A shake, a squeeze, a sturdy stroke, and he'll finish himself. A waste of local resources, but one does what one must.

Mac slaps his hand away, stinging sensitive flesh. "Save it for dessert. Get up, you lazy bugger. Fill the kettle, find the bread." He hauls and Methos follows, to within an inch of that red mouth and broad chest. "And think about Paris."

So now comes the food part, or would, if Methos had any taste for it.

He doesn't. He squeezes the bread loaf in his fist. He butters thickly, peevishly, greasing his fingers and dropping blobs on his breast. He layers tongue and ham and genoa salami and when he bites he tastes and chews another flesh. MacLeod is the only meat he's set for. Eat and be eaten, that's his desire, and sandwich is a poor substitute. He watches Mac eat with gusto, without the courtesy of closing the damn robe, with wine wetting his lips and coarse mustard peppering his mustache. Methos blinks. The light is still dim. Mac has no mustache.

So here comes a second flashback, later than the first. It's more than mere memory: the sensory details rush in, the light, the feel, the smells.

Paris had come to mean Darius, his first port of call no matter how well or ill the state of their relations. Darius, always a calm center in an eddy of threats. Darius, a comfort and danger to know.

"His name is Duncan MacLeod."

"I know the name. I know of the man. I didn't think he was one of your damned protégés."

"He's not. He's different. He's important."

"And he's back in Paris; to kill for you?"

"My son..."

"Ah, we're celibate again. I'd forgotten. Your son. One of your many children, the meek and the fractious, alike. How do you keep them all in line?"

"If I say with love, will you laugh at me?"

(Darius. Oh, Darius. The devil has nothing on you.) Methos burned his tongue on the execrable tea, rather than answer.

There was one padded chair in these rooms and it was not the one Methos occupied. He wondered, picking a stray thread from the napkin, if the different, important MacLeod were offered the more comfortable seat. Perhaps his bottom was more amply cushioned than Methos's lean hips. He grinned and Darius tutted at the sight.

"You look like a satyr."

"It's the tea, Father. Goatweed, is it?"

"Coals to Newcastle. Does Adam Pierson have a fearsome reputation?"

"He's a monk, begging your pardon. Of the mild, abstemious variety."

Darius pursed his lips over his cup. "You're alone too much; it's unwholesome."

"Consider the alternative. Consider it well and in colorful detail, I don't mind."

"Satyr."

"Hypocrite."

"Stay away from him." The laughter lingered in his eyes, in the corners of his mouth, but Darius was not bantering now. "Sit safely within your Watchers and out of his path. Live your monkish, quiet life."

As if he needed warning away from a Challenge magnet like MacLeod. As if he were looking for a fight, a cause, a damned deluded White Knight. With a beautiful blonde woman in his bed and Amanda beating his borders and Darius measuring him for martyrdom. Why state the obvious? Why... "Is this supposed to be a lure? Am I truly a child?"

"Stay away from him, as you value your life," said Darius, again. "You're neither sword nor shield; keep it that way if you want to survive." The sun, setting through the window, gave him a nimbus of fire.

"I am the very image of your Man of Peace," said Methos wryly. And he tucked Duncan MacLeod back into his books.