(The Chaos Chronicles continue)

         "Hey, Pop," the exuberant young man bounced into Duncan's airy study which looked out, through high glass and native stone, on the rolling blue Pacific.

        He is rather like a Tygger-two-foot, Duncan thought, bouncing everywhere, never still, all toothy smiles and sunny music, his own dear son, Sean.

        "Look," Sean let the enormous cardboard box drop right on top of Duncan's desk, entirely obscuring his paperwork. "Just look at what I found!"

        Sean bounced around to Duncan's side of the old desk that Uncle Joe had sent them, with the boxes, from Seacouver after the dojo's new owner--they changed about every five years--this one would be the third, had decided he wanted to use the fourth floor of the dojo as a rental apartment and not as storage for the original owner. Sean dug into the box with more glee than was exactly proper in a young man of twenty-two, but he had been too long in the company of his most improper nanny, Brother Adam, to be elsewise.

        "Look, pictures!" Sean never seemed able to speak in ordinary tones. Everything excited him, and just being around the young man made life seem all the more worthy a pursuit, if only for the sheer bliss of living which Sean himself so eagerly displayed. "You and Dahm and--oh, tell me that's Mary."

        Duncan laughed, "No, Sean, that is you, riding pony-back on Dahm."

        "But you look so old, Pop," Sean lifted up a similar photo they'd taken at the beach on the occasion of his twenty-first birthday. "And Dahm looks like a kid."

        Which, from the ripe old promontory of twenty-two, Duncan took to be anywhere between six and sixteen. "He does at that," Duncan agreed. "I think being head-over-heels in love made him look like a child."

        "With you," Sean said warmly.

        "No, Sean," Duncan reached an arm around him and hugged. "with you."

        "But I was just a baby," Sean argued. "People don't fall in love with babies."

        "Oh, yes they do," Duncan said, "I know I did. The first time I saw you. Love at first sight."

        "Pervert," Sean mussed up Duncan's long hair. He hadn't ever gotten the knack of respecting his elders. Another Dahm idiosyncrasy, no doubt, but in Adam's case, he had no elders.

        "You know what I mean," Duncan cuffed him. "Just wait until you--." He stopped himself almost as quickly as he'd begun the thought, but too late.

        Sean smiled, but the mirth went right out of his voice, "Yeah, Pop, I guess I'll just have to take your word for it." He picked up the frame on the desk that had the later picture in one side and a picture of this beach palace on the other. Sean slipped the older picture into the frame over the house photo and set it back on the desk. "Okay?"

        Duncan smiled and nodded. "Perfect, Sean. I do love you still, more than anything."

        Sean started wandering in ever-larger circles away from the desk, scuffing his bare feet on the carpet, his graceful hands in the back pockets of his loose, white jeans. "More than Dahm?"

        Duncan slipped some of his papers out from under the box. "What? Oh. Yes, Sean, if it came down to choosing between you and Dahm, I would choose you. And so would Dahm, for that matter."

        Sean went wandering closer to the windows, nodding his head, thinking to himself about what his father had said. When he got to the window he stopped, took his hands out of his pockets, and spread them on the glass. He stared straight out at the bright afternoon ocean and asked, "Have you decided between you?"

        Duncan put his pen down. He knew he should use the computer more, but it had cost him so much to learn how to write that he rather enjoyed doing it, even when there were so many alternatives. He looked over at Sean's back, trying to gauge the meaning of the question. "Decided what, Sean?"

        "Who will do it?" Sean asked. "You or Dahm?"

        "Do what, Sean?" Duncan started to rise, but what his son said next sat him right back down again.

        "Kill me," Sean said clearly, bravely. "You or Adam? It has to be sometime this decade, or I will begin to get too old."

        Duncan had somehow hoped this would come another day, far into the future, but the future had this dreadful way of running back towards the present so swiftly that it took his breath. He had never lied about any of this--well, if one didn't include the omission of anything to do with his mother--but Duncan had tried very hard to keep what Sean referred to as "the Immortality thing" at a distance from them all. He had tried in every way to make Sean's childhood "normal." Or, if not normal, then at least, human.

        Duncan levered up again and made himself go stand at the window, beside his son, watching the waves chase the beach, reforming it with every pass. "We still have time, Sean, but if it should come to that, then I will take your life," Duncan never looked at him, sensing the attention would only make the moment more uncomfortable.

        "Dahm could never do it," Sean said almost lightly.

        Duncan's heart sank. He knew how fond the boy was of his brother, Adam. The Highlander made his jealousy descend far below him, out of sight. Sean was incredibly bright, but there were many things he did not yet understand. Surely Sean thought Adam could not kill him because he loved him more.

        "He doesn't love me as much as you do, Pop," still without looking, Sean reached his arm around his father's shoulders.

        Duncan reached for his son's waist and pulled him to his side. He knew better than to speak, or to do anything else except breathe. Then the knot left his throat and he said, "He loves you as much as he can, Sean."

        "I know," Sean said. "He should have been a father too. It's sad he never will be."

        It was impossible not to hear the lament for himself that Sean's sympathy for his brother carried back to Duncan. A familiar minor melody the Scot had known his whole life, up until that terrible moment when he had stolen his son back from the grave in the womb of a dragon. Duncan had stirred and turned the tide, just as the great boulder below them split the incoming waves into froth and steam, with a deep-throated rumble which sounded like the sea's own complaint.

        But the waves never ceased, and here in his son, they began again, cold and dark and lonely.
 
 

       "Pop?" Sean's clear tenor sounded in the silent afternoon and broke Duncan out of his sad reverie.

        "Yes, Dearest Son o' mine?"

        "I'll soon start having to call you 'Mac' or 'Duncan' or some such," Sean commented.

        "And just when I was getting so fond of 'Pop,'" Duncan laughed and strolled back towards his, or rather Joe's, old desk. "Why would that be?"

        "I already look too old to be your son, Pop."

        "Well," Duncan let himself down at the desk's chair and lifted Sean's treasure box off his paperwork, "Then I'll just have to put some grey in at my temples and then you can go on calling me 'Pop' for another decade."

        "Here," Sean returned to the desk and helped with the large cardboard box.

        Duncan went back to his papers and Sean sat on the floor, digging into the box again.

        "Adam will be bringing the Dawsons in sometime this evening," Duncan said. "We can all sit down to a lovely dinner, and then--"

        "No can do, Pops," Sean interrupted.

        "And that is because--?"

        "Got a date," Sean looked up and smiled.

        Duncan was taken by how very like his older brother Sean was, especially when he smiled. He was also taken by how very much he missed old Brother Adam, and the Old Man had only been gone the weekend. Two decades and they'd become the model of marriage long-standing, including the peculiar cycles of distancing and falling in love all over again.

        "What do you mean?" Duncan asked.

        Sean sighed, "Well, you know how you're always going on about my being so isolated here in the Fortress of Solitude--?"

        This was what he called the cliff-set beach mansion which Thomas Cross had given them the day they ran away from Seacouver. Before Sean's first Superman comic book, it had been called the Cross Cliff Harbor Estates, as Duncan recalled, or something very like. Even Thomas called it Fortress now.

        "Well," Sean continued, "you seemed so worried about my not having any--um--any attachments, that I decided to meet some mortals when I went to 'Couver to visit the Dawsons. Mrs. Dawson set me up with someone really nice and we--" Sean ducked his chin and blushed.

        "You did, did you?" Duncan pushed his paperwork to one side and leaned forward on his elbows, siting his son over the desk edge. "And I take it your 'date' is coming to visit with the Dawsons?"

        "Yes, Pop," Sean paused in his rummaging, "I thought this would be a good time for your 'Birds and Bees' lecture."

        Duncan just stared for a moment. "What is there you need to know that either I or Adam have not already told you?"

        "Oh, I don't mean 'where babies come from,'" Sean shook his head, "Wouldn't apply, in any case."

        Duncan had told Sean his mother was dead and that there were no more Danaans on the face of Mother Earth, which was nearly true. He had explained to his son that there would be no future generations of MacLeods--not of his line, at least--because the women who could bear his children no longer existed. "Then what do you want to know, Sean?"

        "How did you know you were in love with Dahm?" Sean asked.

        "How did I--" Duncan stammered. "Oh, I don't know. I think we both knew it long before either of us admitted it. We just kept maintaining that we weren't gay, so we couldn't possibly love each other in 'that way,' and we were just 'good friends,' and so on. We had both been with women most of our lives. Dahm had been married sixty-eight, no, sixty-nine, times."

        "Dahm was married?" Sean tried to envision his brother as a husband to three score and ten women. His brain could not get around the idea.

        "But tell me about the moment when you knew," Sean continued.

        Duncan tried to remember. They came together so easily now, he could hardly remember a time when they were awkward or uncertain. "I seem to recall it was at my loft in the dojo, that Adam said something first, yes--he'd just had his nose broken."

        "And wouldn't that be a major fracture?" Sean joked.

        "As if your own proud profile weren't his equal," Duncan returned. "There had been a custody hearing for you and Mary, when I was still married to Anne. Somehow Adam had been forced to lie about being gay at the hearing. There was some question about a relationship between us and that being an unsavory situation for you and Mary. None of it was true, but all of 'Couver thought Adam was gay. Some punks beat him up and broke his nose at a store in 'Couver."

        "I don't understand," Sean said.

        "Well, all of this happened before Adam and I got together. It seemed the rumor mongers knew many months before either of us did. To divert attention away from me, Adam testified that while he was gay, I was not his lover, that while he loved me, I did not love him, and probably never would, being I was married and not gay. Something like that."

        Sean stared, "That must have been hard for Dahm to do."

        "I think he did it more for you, than for me. It really looked like the State was going to take you away from us, Sean."

        "Because of all the money in the Trust?"

        "And because D.A. Milton wanted to be governor and our little family had suddenly become 'high profile.'" Duncan pushed up from his chair, stretched his back, and walked round the desk to sit on the floor beside his son.

        "So," Sean prompted, "When did you know and how?"

        "It isn't like that, Sean," Duncan tried to explain, "situations just kept bumping us into one another, like boats in adjacent slips. One of those bumps, we just connected, and after that, the harder we tried to get away from each other, the more evident it became that we were bound together by something stronger than either of us. I guess you could think of it as unconditional surrender, except that there was no victor--nor no loser, for that matter--on either side."

        "Just connected?" Sean pushed a little harder.

        Duncan narrowed his focus on his rascal of a son. "You heard me. I am sure you weren't asking about the particulars."

        "How sure?" Sean joked.

        "Well," Duncan took a measured breath, "I do remember we had a lengthy discussion about who would be on the bottom."

        "Really?" Sean said, obviously fascinated. "I hadn't thought of that, but of course, one of you has to be--" his commentary stalled.

        "You are actually asking two questions," Duncan interjected. "First, yes, in such unions, one person is the aggressor and the other takes a more passive role. I think we tend to trade about evenly, but Adam usually lets me lead, well--" Duncan laughed to himself as he remembered a few choice occasions when this was not so. "Anyway, the argument about being on the bottom had nothing at all to do with this arrangement. Warriors tend not to be comfortable exposing their backs."

        "What," Sean remarked, "so you just put the woman there, and to hell with it, if an enemy sneaks up on you, since the woman is going to be your shield?"

        "I never thought of it that way, but, yes, you are essentially right," Duncan answered.

        "So you got to be on the bottom," Sean guessed.

        "Yes, I think so, on my back," Duncan said, ever more uncomfortable about this whole turn in the conversation.

        "But that doesn't work anatomically," Sean complained.

        "Good Lord, Boy," Duncan snorted, "I am nay goin ta draw ye pictures!"

        The combined effect of his father's calling him 'Boy' and the reversion to Highland growl made Sean retreat a little bit. "I just meant--"

        "I'm sorry, Sean," Duncan apologized, "This is just one of those many things which work in the doing, and not the telling, of it. But--" Duncan plunged onward, "In that particular instance, Adam sat astride me, kneeling, and--"

        "Oh, I see," Sean saved his father further embarrassment. "Yes, that would work." There was a very awkward silence followed and Sean went back to digging in the box, sorting the treasures into piles, as his mind sorted through what his father had told him. "But, Pops?"

        "Yes?"

        "You said you traded," Sean began.

        Duncan cleared his throat, knowing all-too-well where this was leading, "Yes?"

        "What is that like? What does it feel like?" Sean asked.

        Duncan thought a moment. He did not want this to deteriorate into a dry discussion of anatomical proximities, because that was actually irrelevant to the act. He wanted his son to understand more about sexual congress than "this goes here and then that goes--."

        "Sean," he began, taking his son's graceful hands into his own meaty warrior paws, "I loved Adam, and I still do, with such a longing, a primal desire, like thirst or hunger. The first time we reversed the situation, sexually, I thought, 'Well, this is going to be something far less than wonderful." But I didn't really care. I just wanted to be close to him, closer than skin, closer than marrow--more than wanted, I needed to be, as surely as I needed to breathe. It was uncomfortable, to start with, which I had expected, but then--" Duncan paused. There was really no describing the incredible sensation.

        Sean lifted his hand out of his father's grasp and traced the slender fingers over Duncan's face. "It was far more than wonderful?" he suggested.

        Duncan sighed softly, "It was all of that and more."

        "And it wasn't demeaning?" Sean asked.

        "No," Duncan said, "I would say more the opposite."

        "Good," Sean said, having settled something in his own mind which he was not apparently going to add to their talk, except that he added, "I always worry that I'm getting too much fun out of it. That it won't be fair for the other person."

        Duncan wondered where his curly headed baby boy had disappeared to, and who was this man sitting so confidently before him.

        And who was this woman he'd taken up with?

---

Clapton Eric...Pilgrim...My Father's Eyes

Sailing down behind the sun, Waiting for my prince to come. Praying for the healing rain To restore my soul again. Just a toerag on the run. How did I get here? What have I done? When will all my hopes arise? How will I know him? When I look in my father's eyes. My father's eyes. When I look in my father's eyes. My father's eyes. Then the light begins to shine And I hear those ancient lullabies. And as I watch this seedling grow, Feel my heart start to overflow.

Where do I find the words to say? How do I teach him? What do we play? Bit by bit, I've realized That's when I need them, That's when I need my father's eyes. Then the jagged edge appears Through the distant clouds of tears. I'm like a bridge that was washed away; My foundations were made of clay. As my soul slides down to die. How could I lose him? What did I try? Bit by bit, I've realized That he was here with me; I looked into my father's eyes.

---

        The afternoon rolled on as Duncan finished his papers and Sean continued his archaeological digs into the treasure box. Just the proximity was a very real pleasure for Duncan. He hoped Adam remembered to stop in town on the way out and pick up the groceries or there would be no dinner tonight for their guests. Perhaps he should just take Sean and run in for an excursion, before too long. They could make it back long before the Dawsons and the Old Man and Sean's Mystery Woman arrived.

        "Oh, my God!" Sean exclaimed from the floor in front of the sunny window, "Lawsy, Mastah MacLeod!" He sorted some cards out in his slender fingers and fanned himself, the picture of a sultry belle. "Stop whatever it is you are doing and come explain this to me," he commanded. Command came as easily as breathing to a princeling like this one.

        Duncan got up from the desk and joined his son on the floor by the cardboard trove. "Yes?"

        Sean snapped the cards in front of Duncan's face, too close for the Highlander to focus.

        He jerked back and reached for the cards--no, photos--what? Oh, dear. Duncan laid the pictures face down on the pale shag carpet. "You know how persuasive Mrs. Dawson is?" he began his explanation, "Well she was determined to get HorseMaster Cross to paint our portraits. He agreed if she would do some photos that he could work from..."

        Sean dipped once again into the treasure well and retrieved more pictures. "Hubba, hubba," he laughed and handed them over, one-by-one to his father. "And what exactly were you doing in this one?" he asked almost as if he expected an answer.

        Duncan felt the flush starting somewhere down by his collarbones and rising like a fire over his swarthy face.

        "Poppa! You're blushing!"

        "Put those away!" Duncan sputtered.

        "Well, Pop?"

        "Well what, Sean?"

        "Do you still have the painting?" Sean was all too perceptive for one so young.

        "Yes," Duncan replied, stacking the offending photographs and putting them back to rest in the cardboard casket.

        "And?" Sean said brightly.

        "And what?" Duncan's flush was altering slightly from the pink shades of shame to the bright fire of rage.

        "May I see it, Poppa?" Sean asked, pushing well past what would have been any limit were he not so spoiled by both his parents, or so sure of their good intentions where he was concerned.

        "Yes," Duncan answered, knowing he could deny his son nothing and it was only a waste of time to try. He crawled over to the eastern window seat and keyed the combination into the subtle knobs hidden beneath the seat cushions which covered not the wooden bench, but a hidden cast iron vault. He moved things carefully around and retrieved the wooden plaque. This he handed to his son.

       Sean took the the wooden frame with great reverence, running his sensitive fingers along the hand- polished red mahogany, carved with exquisite craft, as much a part of the portrait as the image thereon. Inset along the edges lay the soft wool of the MacLeod plaid, echoing the plaid piece which appeared in the painting. It seemed as if the image of the two men rose out of the wood's heart like some druidic or driadic wraiths, gods of the glenn. They were at once serene and passionate, naked and circumspect, playful and tender, and it almost seemed to Sean that they rose from each other as surely as they rose from the cool, silky surface of the wood. He stared, unblinking, as if he saw his parents for the first time then, as if he had never really understood before this moment. Sean's seafoam eyes filled with their own tide and he said softly, "It is so beautiful, Poppa. Why would you ever hide it?"

      "Not out of shame, Sean," Duncan replied, shaking his head. "Just one of the things we put away when we left Seacouver. One of the many things," his deep voice drifted away. "But we brought with us the pearl of greatest worth," he added, taking the portrait from Sean's hands and holding him in the strong, sure circle of his arms, until he had time to recenter and remember to complain about all this hugging they were doing all the time, and when were they ever going to let him grow up?

        Which time stretched into several minutes, seasoned with murmurs of wonder on Sean's part that he might ever know such a partner as his own father had found in the person of his dear brother, Dahm. Sean finally broke away and wiped his eyes with the heels of his hands. He looked up to find Duncan stirring through the cardboard box.

        "Now here's something you won't often see," Duncan proclaimed as he brought forth yet another photograph and its twin.

        "Oh, my goodness, Dahm in a suit, no less!" Sean gasped. "And you in that purple thing you have in the closet that I wore for Halloween ten years back."

        "Bruised violet," Duncan corrected him.

        "Well it was a swell suit," Sean commented, "But just look at Dahm. Isn't he the perfect picture of the Oxford don, though? Why was he dressed up like that?"

        Duncan started laughing just thinking about it. The more he tried to stop and explain, the funnier the memories got, until he was rolling back against the window seat, losing his breath entirely. When he finally got his hilarity under control, he told Sean the story about how Adam Piersen, PhD, crashed the Candidates' Wives Tea.

---

        The conference suite of the Couver Towers was abloom with a false spring of bright hats and white gloves, the armamentarium of the Candidates' Wives. This tea was an annual affair where the various candidates for city office met with the matrons of Couver's political elite. It was said that in this deceptively placid array of cookies and pastries, tea and coffee, sugar and cream, lay the real battlefield, whereupon the fate of the City's Prospective Fathers would be decided. True or no, many bright and promising young careers had gone down, flaming, on this very field.

        This particular tea was more than well-attended, considering this was an off-year for elections and that only five positions would be decided in the local election. The seat on the City Council, or rather the two men vying for that position, had the entire town awake and alive, arguing, sometimes coming to blows, but in any case, more interested in the political goings on than was usual.

        Madeleine, bless her pointed head, she was such a dear, but, really! She'd sent an invitation to the spouse of Duncan MacLeod to attend the tea. Altogether appropriate, in any other circumstance, not this one. Duncan MacLeod's "spouse" was a man, Dr. Adam Piersen. Of course, he wouldn't attend. Would he?

        And it was this last question brought even the dog catcher's wife in to pack the Towers' suite and had them all speculating in conspiratorial whispers and embarrassed giggles. One and all they toyed with imagining what a dreadful sensation that would be, how very outré and all. I mean, what if he showed up in some pink pinafore or, God forbid, something all leather and chains.

        Needless to say, the temperature of the entire room outpaced the continual adjustments to the environmental control system. They were all like a bunch of errant children doing something, if not downright nasty, then at least naughty.

        Not exactly all of them. There was, seated at the room's center, not on a throne, but might as well have been, an impressive matron of obvious comportment and demeanor, dressed in simple black. She had greeted them as they arrived, graciously, but without emotion. Her age was somewhere in the genderless years past middle life, past childbirth, but not quite into elderly. While the room buzzed and twittered like a house of hens, she maintained a quiet center, arrayed alone on the damask couch as if she were perched high on a stately mountain, above the fray. From time to time, one of the wives would cautiously approach for brief audience and then back away when their missions were completed.

        There was one other in the room who seemed to be unaffected by the high excitement, for an opposite reason. Where the Matron was calm and regal, this worker bee was churning at higher velocity than the entire room, puttering hither and yon, seeing to this one's coffee, that one's petition, darting back to the damask throne to confer, and then off again, seeing that the attendants were doing their jobs, never to her satisfaction though.

        Then the room hushed suddenly as if the gild papered walls themselves held their breath. Even the grey-suited, dowdy little worker bee halted in her rounds.

        "Excuse me, sir," the concierge's officious voice sounded at the door, "But this is the Wives' Tea." He said "Wives" so precisely, it seemed the word contained ten vowels at the very least.

        "Well, I hardly think there is an excuse for you, Dear Fellow," the broad, sunny baritone thrilled through the still air like a ship's bell in the dark. "Be that as it may," he laughed softly and every heart in the room skipped after the sunny notes, "I happen to be one of the wives." He mimicked the man's precise pronunciation of this last word and the entire room giggled, except for The Matron and The Bee.

        "Ladies," the soft Cardiff accent rang out, setting up all sorts of titillating harmonics. He stepped around the concierge--he might just as well have stepped over his dead body, for the effect the maneuver had--and addressed them all directly. "I realize that I may have been invited to your little gathering here by mistake, and if it will  in any way be discomfort that I remain, I will immediately leave. One word will do."

        They studied the tall, slim build, the rust raw silk suit, vest and Prince's knot. They lingered over the fine patrician features, the elegance in every gesture, even in his stride as he entered their domain. He was nothing they might have imagined, and more was the pity, for here in their midst, a misplaced royal, or some duke's distaff son, an image from a romance novel with a voice to match. He so charmed them simply by walking across the room, that not one of their number could think of, or say, the one word.

        He bowed to The Matron and introduced himself most graciously, but she remained unimpressed, handing her gloved fingers up in a sketch of shaking hands. Then Adam Piersen, veteran of many a battle, too many, did the unexpected thing. He nodded to The Matron and went over to the breakfast buffet table to stand behind The Bee who was fussing with the silverware and restacking the napkins. He pulled up a chair for her and then he walked to her side and gently took her tiny hands in his own.

        "Madam," Adam addressed her with the highest respect, "Please, be seated. If there is any task left to be done, I shall surely see to it."

        The barest grin sped across the First Lady's features and she allowed him to lead her away from the table to the chair. When she was seated, Dr. Piersen drifted down effortlessly to one knee, again took her hands, and introduced himself to the Mayor's wife. "I am Adam Piersen, Madam."

        "You are Duncan MacLeod's lover?" the Mayor's wife was absolutely tactless in all dealings where she held the power. It was enough she chose to speak with him at all. She did not want it to appear in any way that she was supportive of MacLeod's candidacy.

        "I like to think I am more than that, Madam," Adam said lightly.

        "You don't seem to be homosexual," the Wife commented just loudly enough that the entire interested room heard, including the new DA's wife on the couch throne.

        "Well," Adam smiled, "I told my tailor to embroider a scarlet Q on the right lapel here, but he just wouldn't hear of it." The long fingers lifted up as if in flight and then folded over at the wrists as he flounced and lisped through an imitation of exactly what they had expected.

        Quite a few coughs went round the tea party as the wives covered their amusement.

        "You do dress well," the Wife commented as if this were a mark in his disfavor.

        "You wouldn't have thought so this morning when I was swabbing out the nursery," Adam answered good-naturedly. "I understood that this was an affair of some importance. I dressed accordingly." In one fell stroke, Adam had covered so much territory it took the Wife a moment to sort it out. Simple domesticity, honor to them, gentle humor, even with a bit of tender self-deprecation. He had counted coup from his knees.

        The Wife was impressed, though her seduction by the lanky young man was far outdistancing her impression of his political tactics. You just wanted to touch him for no apparent reason, like a beloved son, or an old, very dear friend. "Do get up off your knees, Dr. Piersen. I won't have you ruining that fine suit."

        Adam rose up, as gracefully and easily as he had descended, and pulled another chair over to sit in front of her, refusing to recognize what had been an obvious dismissal.

        Well, the Mayor's Wife thought, if he is so brazen as to remain, then he deserves what he gets. "Are we to understand that you lied at the custody hearing about not being Mr. MacLeod's lover?"

        "If that is your understanding, Madam," Adam replied, "then you have been misinformed. When Dr. Lindsey's husband returned from the dead--or at least, the disappeared--and Duncan's marriage was thereby annulled, then and only then did I plight my troth to him," Adam's lovely accent lent the archaic speech an authenticity, a sincerity that none other could have managed, but in his mouth, the words were only sweet and not saccharine. "And only then did I ask Anne Lindsey for his hand."

        Such romantic claptrap, thought the Mayor's Wife, but even so, he was a dear. "Why would you ask her?"

        "She being his nearest kin through their joint custody of the children," Adam replied.

        "I suppose next you'll be pushing for Seacouver to legalize same sex marriages?" the Mayor's Wife stated one of former DA Milton's many objections to MacLeod as suitable candidate.

        "Oh, I hope not," Adam sighed. "I have all I can do as Campaign Manager and Chief Cook and Bottle Washer. As far as I know, Duncan has no specific gay agenda."

        "You expect me to believe that?" the Mayor's Wife nearly shouted.

        "I have only the highest expectations of your fine self, Lady, but you will have to follow your own dictates. I am surely not the arbiter of your superb tastes," Adam's voice was so soothing it was difficult to follow the words exactly.

        "What about the docks?" she asked, meaning the gay owned stores in the River District who were in the process of being driven out by the Couver bankers at Milton's behest.

        "Well," Adam lowered his head and moved closer to her, as if to impart a confidence, but, of course, the whole room heard it, just as it had heard every word since Adam entered. "Just between you and me, Madam, Duncan is a good sort, but he has all these unrealistic notions about justice and honor and such. I mean, really, in this world, today? Where is any of that going to get us, I ask you. How will championing children's rights in the courts, or wives rights in general, or taking the part of any of those who aren't already fully represented by the dominant portion of the political scenery, how will spinning your wheels to do the right thing, ever get you anywhere? He is a fine and honorable man, I'll grant, but he is such a dreamer. Duncan seems to think that there is room in the world for mercy and equal justice for all. I mean, what can he be thinking?"

        "What indeed?" the Mayor's Wife pressed her lips together and she sited on the handsome young man in the beautiful suit. You are the son of the devil Himself, she thought. It was certainly easy to see what appealed to MacLeod in his fine young friend. "And why should I interest myself in this dreamer of yours?"

        "No reason whatsoever, Madam," Adam replied, smiling, "I cannot think what use he could possibly be to you." He shrugged, "Except, of course, he is so damned loyal, that if he thought you took his part in any cause, he'd probably die trying to repay the favor. He's just that sort," Adam sighed again, this time more loudly and with all the notes of a wife discussing her beloved, but slightly addle-pated spouse, "A hero in a time of villainy. It would be inspiring, if it weren't so ridiculous."

        Not the son of the Devil, the Mayor's Wife thought, but Old Springheel Jack Hisself, as her bridge partner, Lucille, would put it.

        Adam turned suddenly towards the door. All eyes followed his.

        "Adam?" Candidate MacLeod called from the door, "Forgive me for interrupting," he addressed the ladies, "but there is something of an emergency."

        Adam took his leave of the Mayor's Wife. No one noticed. No one noticed anything at all but the tall, stunning Scot in the deep violet suit and greatcoat, standing like an oak at the entrance.

        He wasn't at all what they'd been expecting either. As they watched, the venerable Dr. Piersen approached the gorgeous man at the door. The two men discussed some last minute cancellation of one of their expected speakers at the rally that night: Duncan stating the difficulties, Adam coming up with the various alternatives, Duncan choosing the best strategy, Adam modifying the strategies and designing backups.

        The wives, including the Mayor's, were not interested, nor did they much bother about the particulars. What they watched was the even, balanced way these two interacted. Neither overbore the other. Each added, and then again, and then added again, until between them the solution was more than their separate parts. Neither claimed the uppermost hand. Neither conceded. Somehow between both of their obviously strong wills, they came to unspoken agreements of respect, if not of stance.

        Acted out before them, in the presence of these two, there was not a person in that room--well, maybe Madelaine--who did not see, surely, clearly, what was so obviously displayed before them at the doorway.

        A perfect marriage.

        The kind they wished they had.

        And they would have hated them both for that fact alone, were not the two men so charmingly inoffensive and artless about this blessed thing which they had built--against all odds--between them.

---

        "Sounds like Dahm and you charmed their socks off, Pop," Sean laughed. "But if you won the Mayor's Wife over to your side, how did we end up here? What happened with the election? Did that dastardly DA pull something fast?"

        "Dastardly DA," Duncan chuckled, "I like that. Wish we'd thought of that for the campaign. And, yes, you are right in suspecting him of the foulest play. Milton had a particular knack for the dramatic, I'll give him that."

        Sean waited, rapt in curiosity. When Duncan said nothing, he fairly exploded, "Yes?"

        "Oh," Duncan's thoughts returned to the present. Those were such dreadful times. How to tell Sean and not frighten him? "You know we have spoken about what happens with people when you push them too far, too blatantly, towards the edge of the social standards?"

        Sean rolled his eyes. "Yes, Pop. Please, just tell me what happened."

        "Well, we walked a fine edge--a very fine edge--gaining acceptance despite the fact our lifestyle was so outside the norm. We were always very careful not to play to the stereotypes, careful not to frighten or distress anyone. We never touched each other in public, nor in any way pushed our marriage as anything but a sort of special friendship. People bought that. That seemed to be something palatable, something they could encompass in the schemes of their own doubts." Duncan's voice floated into the silence as his thoughts of that time swept him back.

        Sean finally cuffed him. "Pop!"

        "Sorry," Duncan sighed, "I hadn't remembered, but at the time, I thought this would be the first step, a dry run, to 'outing' the Immortals. We had come so close with Kalas and that CD disc with all the Watchers' information he stole. I thought that Adam and I could develop a strategy for bringing the Immortals into the world of Men, the light of day. I thought we could learn how to do it in a controlled way, so we would never face that threat again. Oh, I don't know, I got a little too much political fever built up. I began to think anything was possible."

        "What happened, Pop?"

        "Milton stole those pictures," Duncan pointed in the general direction of the cardboard box. "And passed them to the Couver rag," he paused and shook his head smiling sadly, "And that was all she wrote."

        "Oh, Pop," Sean patted him consolingly. "So, that's how Milton won the seat on the Council?"

        "No," Duncan hesitated, wondering if he should just refuse to say any more, but the lad was full grown and the world was a hard place, after all. "That was how Joe Dawson won his first political position in the hierarchy of the local body politic ala Seacouver. Which is why he is now the mayor in his third term of office. That, and the fact he has one of the most connected and savvy First Ladies the town has ever known."

        "I must have missed the part about him running," Sean tried to sort this out. He'd never actually heard the story about how Joe had moved into the Mayor's mansion. It just seemed Uncle Joe had always been Seacouver's Father in Residence, and Lucille, the First Lady of the Bay City.

        "He didn't," Duncan fidgeted restlessly and stood up. "Adam--I know he never meant to--he was really only guessing--but you know how keen your brother's perceptions are. Adam went to see Milton and he let the bastard know just how very much he was not pleased by the treachery. He also made some subtle innuendo about Milton's being thirty and still a bachelor, and that he might have fooled the rest of the city, but Adam was unconvinced."

        "Oh," Sean made the connection. "The DA was gay!"

        "No," Duncan replied dourly, "The DA was dead. Both wrists slit and blood all over the bath the next morning."

        "Oh, no, Pop. Poor Adam. He must have felt awful."

        "I wish I could say that was so, Sean, and maybe it was, but neither I nor anyone else ever saw one ounce of remorse on Adam's part. Of course, we were in the middle of some truly dreadful threats and attacks, and busy beyond believing trying to get packed and set up to move down here. I could hardly blame him for his lack of empathy."

        "So there was no one left to run for the seat on the Council," Sean said.

        "Exactly, Sean. We, I, had stepped down from the running and Milton was dead," Duncan remembered how loud and long Adam had laughed when he read the news of the twisted little man's demise. Better that Sean never know that side of his brother. "Lucille dialed up her bridge partner, the then mayor's wife, and suggested since she was determined to be wed to the blues singer, it might be time to appoint him to a political office that would be suitable to her abilities and station."

        "I think Joe was just so smitten with the Sweet Lucille, that he went along with everything. And he did surprise everyone by being such an able political poppa. He did finally draw the line at a run for governor. I think they fought about that for over a month, but Joe has a certain--um--endurance where such things are concerned and he won out at the last simply because Lucille got tired of fighting."

        "She says he's stubborn as a goat with one horn," Sean said. "I always took that to be a sexual reference."

        Duncan laughed. "Dear Boy, everything that Lucille says is something of a sexual reference."

        Some things are such self-evident truths, that the speaking of them is an hilarious redundancy. This was such a truth. Even the way Mrs. Dawson breathed was something of a sexual reference.

        After the two men caught their breaths, they wandered out of the sitting room and downstairs to the cool stone of the kitchen, buried, as was most of the house, in the bedrock of this seacliff.

        Sean insisted on making coffee and snacks while Duncan finished the story about their flight from Seacouver.

        "But I still don't understand why Milton killed himself just because he was gay," Sean interrupted as he set the table with the afternoon "tea."

        Duncan poured and stirred and stalled. "Oh, Sean, just thank the Lord Himself you have no understanding of such despair and self-hatred. You won't have to deal with that in your life."

        "Tell me about this girl who is coming to visit, Sean," Duncan changed the subject.

        Sean spilled the coffee pot and the hot liquid ran over the table and onto the floor.

        By the time it was cleaned up it seemed their Father-Son chat was over.
 
 

            At the topmost level of the Fortress of Solitude, level with the drive and the bridge across the sea chasm, resided a lovely cant-roofed "tower room" which was Sean's favorite portion of the entire house. Looking out over the ocean, through the eastern windows, Sean had imagined himself captain of a tall ship, or played at naming the rocks in the tiny bay. Here he had spent many quiet hours watching the day turn round to night through all the shades of sultry afternoon to mystic eve and into the wild blindness of the sea at night. Having lived here most of his life, he was deaf to the breakers which wove their thudding, crashing tides against the base of this land shard. The almost imperceptible harmonics of the ocean against the bedrock gave the entire dwelling a pulse, as if the sea were the heart of the house.

        Sean could see why the monks had chosen to build their monastery on this cliff. Even without that precedent this would be holy ground.

        He watched his father reading a book, a real one with pages, by the bright fire, which crackled and spit, strobing the hearth in soft tones of orange and yellow. The restlessness which had claimed him this entire past year, subsided in Sean's first wave of sentimentality. He was really too young to understand the emotion, he only understood that the beat of the sea against the rock and the warmth against his face from the fireplace and the image of his father's reading by that fire, all came together to set themselves inside his memories--all under the heading of "home."

        Sean was distracted from his computer slate, and the lengthy letter he was working on, by the odd combination of sensations the emotion elicited in him, in counterpoints of comfort and sadness. He would be leaving soon, and the thought made him both ecstatic and anxious. He wanted to say so much to his Poppa, but the time was too short now to begin. Dahm and the Dawsons would be here at any moment.

        "Pop?" he called over to the Scot by the fire.

        "Yes, Sean?" Duncan looked up, all his attention coming to a sun-glazed focus on his beloved son.

        Yes, Sean thought, still there, always there, ever and ever, "Love you, Pop."

        Duncan's face opened in a spontaneous and gracious smile. "Yes, you can borrow the car for your date tonight," Duncan covered his own sentimentality.

        Sean wanted to say that his proclamation had nothing at all to do with asking a favor, but he knew his father already understood. "Thanks, Pop," he said.

        And even this had nothing to do with the car, but Sean suspected Duncan knew that as well.

---

       Duncan closed the book. "They're here," he reached his hand towards Sean, indicating he wanted the slate.

        "I'll get it, Pop," Sean blanked the screen quickly. It was a personal letter.

        "Remember what happened the last time you mis-keyed the gate?" Duncan reminded him.

        Sean snorted and brought the slate over. "You're just never going to let me forget that. It was an honest mistake, Pop."

        "Well," Duncan keyed in the combination for the gate at the landside of the bridge. "Honest or no, we were stuck here a week while Master Cross found us an engineer to bypass the system."

        "And we near starved to death," Sean headed for the door, "And then the wolves came and..."

        Out the door and around the drive, Sean's exaggerated tale of their stranding drifted back through the open door, while Duncan chuckled and did a last minute "tidy-up," before he went to greet their guests.

        By the time he joined Sean out on the windy drive, the Dawsons had disembarked and Adam was unpacking the trunk of the beige Lincoln, one of a long line of Lincoln's that The Bear bought new each year and then sold, second hand, to Mayor Joe, the next year. "Lucille, Joe!" he extended his arms and hugged them both. "How was the ride?"

        "Long," Adam answered without looking up from his position bent over the trunk and the impressive array of luggage packed therein.

        "Oh, and this can't be Kyle," Duncan reached out to shake the young man's hand, thinking a hug would be unwelcome. "You are nearly grown up?"

        Joe's son was the image of his mother. Tall, strawberry blond, almost too beautiful for his gender, with a newly lowered voice that was all at odds with his youth and shyness.

        "I'm nearly nineteen," Kyle said, indignantly, meaning he was already grown up, but demonstrating that he was anything but.

        Lucille laughed. "All right, men," she addressed her troops and included Sean. "Let's get the bags in."

        "No," said Sean. "Pop and Dahm will be happy to get them for you. Come along and I'll get you settled in and give you the grand tour. Doubtless you'll want to freshen up before dinner, and that's in an hour."

        It might have sounded impertinent, but for Sean's exceeding good cheer and humor. They wandered away towards the tower room door, Sean asking the Mayor about this or that bit of city business that had been pending his last trip to Seacouver.

        "Do you think he did that on purpose?" Duncan took the bags as Adam handed them out. He stacked them on the gravel drive, thinking this would take four trips at least.

        Adam did not answer, at least not beyond the running disgruntlement he had been mumbling since his arrival.

        "Was it a hard drive?" Duncan asked. He found he was staring at the back of Adam's neck. He had such a long neck. There were new tendrils of baby-fine curls--like Sean's used to be, before his hair had darkened and thickened into a copy of his father's mane. As often as Duncan had tried to talk Adam into letting his hair grow, the eldest Immortal had always refused, so the only time Duncan got to see the curls was when the old man had just been too busy for a haircut.

        "What are you doing?" Adam froze as if he were playing a game of "Statues."

        Duncan realized his hand had followed his thoughts to the down-soft curls at Adam's neck. "I just thought you might be growing your hair out."

        Adam's mouth pressed into a smirking grin as he ducked away from the Highlander's touch. "You know I've explained about that."

        "Yes," Duncan leaned around him and lifted out the last suitcase. "I heard you. I'm not saying I believe you, but I heard you. I just think you would look--"

        "Like a troll," Adam grumbled, arranging two suitcases under one arm, a tote under the other, and picking up two suitcases, one for each hand. He headed around the drive for the door to the tower room.

        "Yeah," Duncan loaded up his own arms, talking to himself, doing a passable, and hilarious, mimicry of his better half. "And it would be tooo much like the way I looked when I was Death on a Horse, Darling. And one long haired male in an arraaaaaangement, such as ours, is just under the legal limit, I'm sooo sure."

        Ah, well, each to his own, Duncan made his way towards the entry. Still, he would like, just once, to sit by the fire and brush Adam's hair. It was such a pleasurable thing, Duncan sighed. He so loved having it done to him. Maybe later. Maybe, like Joe, he could prevail in this just by enduring. He paused, halfway to the door, struck by a sudden realization which, while clear, made no sense to him whatsoever.

        Not half an hour earlier, he had been sitting by the fire, reading his book on ancient Gaelic myths and relishing--no, wallowing--in the sheer anticipatory pleasure of Adam's approaching return. Adam, whom he loved above all others, except his son. Adam, the lithe and winsome old/young man/boy who had taken his heart with such completeness, Duncan sometimes wondered it did not beat in the other man's chest. He had been reading the passage where Cuchulain first meets his bride to be. The complexity of language, the sweet and rich passions, the hilarious and cutting satire, had put him very much in mind of their own union.

        And the thought which had stalled him here in the middle of the driveway, like a Christmas tree hung with suitcase ornaments, was the notion that he was still waiting for Adam's return. How could his love for this man be so consuming, so enrapturing, on the one hand...

        And so frigging ordinary, on the other?

        Duncan moved forward. It was not as if he expected them to run to each other's arms across a field of flowers in slow motion to some syrupy tune, after all. Still, his expectations had run a little higher than, don't touch my hair, and get the bags. But he couldn't lose the notion that he was still waiting for another Adam, who would be along any minute now and whom he did miss greatly and for whom he longed with every fiber of his person.

        The tower room was empty. The fire in need of a new log. Adam had already descended with the rest of the luggage. Kyle and Sean were making like sealions, splashing in the pool which took up most of what would have been their back yard. Duncan opened the window and called to them to get the rest of the luggage.

        Sean looked up, "Sure, Pop. I just thought you would like some time alone with Dahm." He climbed out of the pool and Kyle followed along after him. Sean threw him a pair of tennies for the gravel and they disappeared around the side of the tower.

        Oh, what a dolt! Duncan thought. Me, worrying over what quality of Adam I am served this day, and poor Sean stood up by his date. And I never noticed. And he never complained, or even made mention of the disappointment. Sean even thought, romantic as his dense old dad, to let them have some time to welcome each other home. Even if it came to naught.

        Adam is right, Duncan thought as he rode the lift down into the heart of the cliff where the bedrooms had been built in the pre-existing caverns of the previous owners, the monks. My father must have been some dark Gaelic depressive, always finding the cloud in the clearest of skies. Then Duncan reminded himself that it was very likely Connor MacLeod was his dad and as moody a character as ever graced the planet.

        The door to the Deluxe Suite was closed and Duncan thought it better that he not intrude. He left Lucille's luggage next to Joe's just outside the door.

        One more level down and Duncan entered the Master Bedroom. Situated at the cliff's periphery, it had a deep window chiseled through the wall and glazed in hand-rolled glass. He could hear the water running in the adjacent bath. Adam's single duffel was dumped on the bed, one of his shoes at the end of the bed and the other halfway across the room. Duncan chuckled quietly. It had long been his contention that he couldn't understand Methos' being so difficult to find since he left a broad trail everywhere he went. And here, by the window, was a sock, and the other, God knew where. It would turn up.

        Duncan pulled open a drawer in the enormous chest against the far wall. He retrieved a soft pair of stone-washed jeans and a pale grey sweatshirt with cropped sleeves, Adam's favorite apparel. These he put near the bathroom door. Then he turned to unpacking and sorting through Adam's navy duffel. Well, at least he put the dirty laundry on the bottom and the clean, well, cleaner, clothes near the top. Something was nagging at the back of Duncan's consciousness. Something undone. Something missing.

        He built two hillocks of lights and darks--Adam didn't have any "wash these carefully"--which was the extent of the MacLeod family laundry sort protocol. He put away the clean clothes in the chest of drawers. Hmmm? The T-shirt on top had a small stain near the left shoulder. Maybe an old stain, Duncan thought, lifting it back out of the drawer and up to his nose. He might have known that was a mistake, but he could never have anticipated the immediate, heady rush which accompanied the sudden loss of light, the absolute immersion in the scent of the man who owned him, body, heart, and soul.

        Duncan felt his pulse in the dull tenderness at his groin beneath the loose linen pants. Reduced to being turned on by laundry, for God's Sake!

        "Huffing my underwear?" a teasing, low whisper brushed against Duncan's left ear lobe. "I missed you too," Adam continued as his cool, long fingers slid effortlessly down inside the front of Duncan's linen trousers.

        "Your T-shirt," Duncan tried not to gulp, "I couldn't tell whether it needed washing or--"

        "Shhhh," Adam stroked lightly and then adjusted to a tolerable pressure against Duncan's building erection.

        Which had the effect of at least "shhshing" Duncan, if not driving him down onto his suddenly weak knees.

        "I'm sorry, Duncan," Adam continued in the Cardiff and honey baritone, "If I had acted on my baser impulses, I would have taken you in the driveway before our guests even got out of sight. I have never actually gotten nauseous from lusting before, but I thought after we passed the state line and there was only an hour more till we got home, that I--. Well, I couldn't even look at you. I knew I wouldn't be able to control myself.

        "That's, uh, flattering," Duncan gasped. "Maybe," Duncan leaned forward, bracing his arms on the chest of drawers. "we could continue this closer to the bed," he had begun writhing beneath Adam's talented touch, and he was sure he would not long be standing at this rate.

        Adam agreed with some reluctance and they made it as far as the laundry hills, where Duncan tripped, or was pushed, or something else. His linen pants joined the light laundry hill as he rolled over onto the dark. "Wrong pile," he murmured. "Special care," he added in a nearly coherent squeak as the cold lotion drizzled down his back and the old man's graceful fingers traced insinuating patterns over the Highlander's broad back and down between his legs.

        "Oh, I have thought of nothing else but your special care," Adam crooned, "since ever I turned that old Lincoln onto the ocean overlook highway."

        "What?" Duncan returned briefly from the soft and hazy sensorium of a cat being stroked.

        "You take the highway," Adam laughed and sang, "And I'll take the low way--"

        And if he didn't get to Scotland afore him, then at least it was a dead heat.

---

        "And here I was telling Sean," Duncan rolled to his side and propped his head up on his hands, "that I usually took the lead."

        Adam pushed up to sitting, grabbed a dirty T-shirt and started mopping up. "So Sean did have that talk with you," he commented.

        Duncan declined the offer and rose to get them towels and warm wash cloths. His hips were stiff, but given the reason, he could hardly complain. "You know," he said, returning with the towels and cloths and Adam's change of clothes. "You seem to forget you are far more flexible than I am. I don't think I'm built to be bent in two like a pretzel." He rubbed his hip.

        Adam did what he always did when Duncan complained they were getting too athletic in their lovemaking. He simply sighed and glanced up at the ceiling. There was a rough wooden chandelier hung in the high vault of the ceiling, set with hurricane lamps.

        Duncan slapped a wet washcloth over the grinning features. "Oh, you're insatiable!"

        Adam peeled the cloth down off his face and finished mopping up and toweling off, starting a new pile, terry stuff. "So what did you think?" he asked warily.

        "About what?" Duncan slipped on a pair of sweats.

        "Your talk with Sean," Adam prompted.

        "Oh, yes, we talked about a lot of things," Duncan picked up the laundry and put it in the empty baskets by the door, folding up the linen pants to be done "special care."

        "Things?" Adam prompted again as he pushed up and strolled over to pour his long frame onto the bed.

        Duncan was struck, yet another of the countless times, by the languid, sinuous way that the old man moved through space and time. He tried to do the mental calculation about how long before dinner was going to have to be started and--. "Adam!" Duncan finally connected with his earlier sense that something was missing. "Supper! You forgot!"

        "Well, given my addled state of desire," Adam answered, "You could forgive me such an oversight."

        "Oh, damn," Duncan snorted, "We have nothing to serve our guests! Kyle alone would probably go through three helpings. I know Sean would."

        "Well, Darling," Adam propped up on his elbows, "In the first place, Lucille, though just as smitten I am sure with her paramour, did have the presence of mind to remind me, and dinner is in the car on the floor of the back seat, just waiting to be heated up."

        "Oh," Duncan said in apologetic tones.

        "And in the second place," Adam shifted around, draped his long legs over the end of the bed, and sat all the way up. "Didn't Sean tell you about his date tonight?"

        "Yes, he did," Duncan stopped his restless straightening up and turned towards Adam. "But as you may have noticed, his date stood him up. Unless you left her off up the road somewhere, then she doesn't seem to have come down from Seacouver with you." With supper only needing reheating, there would be plenty of time to--.

        "What exactly did Sean tell you?" Adam looked up at the bare-chested Scot and began to wonder whether they might not delay supper a half-hour, an hour at the most. Surely Lucille and Joe would not mind.

        "Oh," Duncan slumped down beside him on the bed and tried to remember. "He wanted to know when, and how, I first knew I loved you. What it was like when we made love. He said Lucille had set him up with a girl when he was last in Seacouver. That she was coming down with you and he had a date this evening with her and wouldn't be coming to dinner. I think he has slept with this girl. I think he may even be in love with her. But he wouldn't really tell me anything about her when I asked."

        "Oh, and I told him the story of how we left Seacouver, the Candidates' Wives Tea story. I did tell him about Milton," Duncan added soberly.

        Adam started giggling. Duncan elbowed him.

        "I told him, he should be grateful not to be in a position that afforded him such despair," Duncan added pedantically.

        "Oh, really," Adam tried to regain a sober attitude, "and what position is that? Tits up in the tub."

        "Adam!"

        "All right, Duncan," Adam shook his head. "I told Sean he should tell you what was going on with him, because I wasn't certain how you'd react. I can see he didn't, so I suppose it falls to me to explain."

        Duncan's hand found its way to the new curls at the nape of Adam's neck. He wished they would stop speaking words and go back to that other, more intimate, discourse modality. "You could tell me later," Duncan suggested as he lay back on the bed, pulling Adam down with him onto his chest.

        Adam folded his long arms across Duncan's chest and rested his sharp chin on them, staring into the smoky heather depths of the Highlander's eyes. "Sean's date came with us," he began.

        "So where is she?" Duncan asked, lifting his head and tracing the leading edge of Adam's forearm with his soft lips.

        "Kyle is Sean's date," Adam said quietly.

        Duncan bolted up so fast that Adam ended up in a heap on the floor. "No!" he shouted and took to pacing back and forth across the bedroom, talking to himself.

        Adam picked himself up off the floor and sat on the bed, trying to gather his wits in the gales of the Black Celtic Mood aborning on the near horizon.

        "Oh, damnation!" Duncan shook his head and turned just shy of walking into the far wall. "Poor Sean! It's my fault, my fault. What did I think would happen? Why didn't I think?" He stopped dead still in front of Adam and stared down accusingly.

        Adam's artist's hands lifted, palms up, "I don't know?" he suggested an answer, in case any was required. He doubted it.

        "I mean--Really!" Duncan sputtered.

        "Really," Adam agreed tentatively.

        "What have we been doing anyway? We've been making this, this--" Duncan's arms waved as if he were warding off blows, "We made it all seem so natural, so easy, so absent any consequences!"

        Adam drew far inside of himself. Wasn't that always the way with such things, he mused emotionlessly. You set out on a sunny day, much as any other day, and the darkness descends just when you least expect it. Just when you think it will never come again. Just when you think you are safe.

        Just when you think something will last forever, it is over in an eye-blink. Adam set aside his heart and returned to the one-sided conversation that Duncan was having with himself. He owed the Highlander his attention, at least through this difficult time, but in a more real sense, Adam was already gone.

        "Maybe we could take him to a therapist. Oh, God, what is he going to do when some idiot assails his manhood and he can have no way to say anything back on his own part? How will he ever deal with all the nights when he lies awake wondering if he were going to hell for this? How will he stand living like a leper in the wide, clean world?"

        Adam folded his hands on his lap and affected a benign expression, "I do not know, Duncan. How do you do it?"

        Duncan ceased his tirade and his pacing to turn slowly towards Adam. "Oh, Adam. I didn't mean, I--"

        "Rest your mind, Duncan," Adam replied in something very near a monotone. "I did some investigating on my own. Kyle is only a beard. Sean is not really dating him, he is just pretending to, so that he may have some time to be with his lady love, Mary Palmer, who is currently in town visiting friends."

        Duncan's entire body relaxed in utter relief at Adam's statement.

        Adam picked up his duffel from the bedside and carried it over to the chest, pulling out the bottom drawer, and beginning to pack, while Duncan collapsed on the bed and caught his breath. By the time Adam began pulling his dirty clothes back out of the laundry basket, Duncan had returned to himself enough to ask what the hell the old man was doing.

        Adam stared down at his hands for a moment, then he sat back on his heels and turned his face to look straight at Duncan. "I should not have tested you so deviously. I thought I wanted to know the truth. I suppose I did. Now I know."

        Duncan came over and sat down beside him on the floor. "What are you saying?"

        Adam breathed in and then out with a studied slowness before he answered. "I am leaving, Duncan," he said simply, cleanly, without any emotion whatsoever.

        "Because I went off on a rave?" Duncan asked, incredulous.

        "No, Duncan. Because I thought--I wanted to think--you felt differently about this," Adam paused, "I should not have tried to come back and kidnap Sean," he added cryptically.

        "When you ran away twenty years ago?" Duncan asked.

        Adam placed his hands over Duncan's, "I knew how you felt then. That's why I left. After I came back, I just never," he ducked his head down on his long neck. "I wanted to believe, and so I did."

        "Believe? Believe what, Adam?"

        "I stayed because my mother ordered that I raise my brother and because I wanted you," Adam ran his tongue over his dry lips. "Sean is grown and about to begin a family of his own. If I were going to stay, it would only be out of pure selfishness, unless you wanted me also."

        "But I do," Duncan interrupted, "I love you, Adam."

        "I know you do, Duncan," Adam sighed, "but it hurts you too much to be with me. So badly, in fact, that for that instant when you thought your son had taken a gay lover you could see it in no other way, but the foulest curse."

        "I'm sorry, Adam," Duncan did not know what else to say. It seemed Adam was serious about this.

        "There is nothing to apologize for, Duncan. You only spoke the truth. Out of the respect due to you, I am also trying to speak the truth. I cannot stay, Duncan," Adam wadded the laundry into the duffel and retrieved the shoes that Duncan had placed so thoughtfully together near the door. He put them on and stood up setting the duffel bag in the crook of his left arm. "You have given me so much joy," Adam reached his hand down to Duncan, still on the floor. "That I will have no single regret for any instant of the past two decades."

        Duncan batted his hand away, "Well I'm having a large regret over this particular instant, Old Man. What the hell do you think you are doing?"

        Adam shook his head. "As I said. I am leaving."

        Duncan scrambled up. "No, you're not! I said I was sorry, dammit! I'll never say anything like that again. Put that down and stop this nonsense!"

        Adam leaned forward and hugged him with his free arm, "Live and grow stronger, Highlander. I'll come back for a visit in time for Sean's wedding."

        "Sean's getting married?"

        "Yes, Duncan. Maybe you can have that talk with him when he gets back tonight," Adam opened the bedroom door and stepped into the hallway.

        "Wait!" Duncan bolted into the hall and blocked his path.

        Adam leaned back against the roughhewn stone of the hallway wall and waited quietly.

        "What will I do?" Duncan said finally, in the voice of a long forgotten child.

        Adam thought his heart might burst before he ever made it out of this place, but his voice remained steady and he softened it, with just a touch of concern. "I could make a suggestion or two, if you like, Duncan."

        Duncan partly nodded in assent and partly shook his head in complete disbelief.

        "First," Adam began gently, "you must let go of my sadness. It has nothing to do with you and I don't want you to use it as an excuse to avoid your own sadness."

        "Yes," Duncan answered hollowly. Maybe if he agreed to all the terms, Adam would stay.

        "Then," Adam chewed his lip, "Well, this business with Marak and Malak and Mary will come to pass soon enough. This next year, I should think. When that is over, I have a strong feeling that Ram will make a reappearance."

        Duncan started to reach for Adam, but he was already too far away.

        "My mother is very like me, Duncan," he laughed. It was at once a woeful and sardonic sound. "In many more ways than either of us would care to admit. And she has the advantage of being the proper gender, Duncan. She is very fond of you. I think you might find comfort there. Well--" he laughed again, this time there was a taste of joy in his tones, "Well, as much comfort as Chaos may afford."

        "But what about you?" again the child's voice trembled down the stone hall.

        "Oh, Duncan," Adam amazed himself at just how very much he had changed in the years since he had met the Highlander. He could never have done this before. Oh, leaving would have been easy enough, but not this, this goodby. He could not have survived this before, but he was easy of spirit and certain of will now. "I will be alone. I will be well. I will think of you often and I will deal with my sadness. I will live, as I have always lived. And we will meet again from time to time. Perhaps we will even share memories of Sean and our time together, when our pain has passed away."

        Duncan's dark eyes narrowed and he spoke out of the pain that was nowhere near passing. "You never loved me! You only pretended to do so to stay near your brother and to come under my protection! You are nothing better than a hetair, and not nearly so fair!" he stepped out of Adam's way.

        "If I did not love you, Duncan, then there would be no reason to leave. I would not care one whit about your suffering. I would be all too happy to remain the Head Odalisque at the Fortress d'Solitude for the rest of my days," Adam started down the hallway towards the lift.

        "Do anyway," Duncan called after him. "If that's what it takes, pretend you don't love me."

        Adam was not very far away from the barbaric raider of his past. He'd made many difficult charges through seas of weapons and humans where just to get forward a single step was almost worth your life.

        But the next four steps to the lift were far more dearly won than any charge of his entire bloody career as raider and soldier and brigand.

---

        "Duncan? Honey?" Sweet Lucille floated into the kitchen bringing the bright notes of lilac and peach. "Are you all right, Darlin'?"

        Duncan did not stir from his place hunched over the kitchen table, staring inside himself at the dark emptiness which was nearly blinding. Lucille walked over and ran her pale fingers through his dark waves. "Duncan?"

        She sat down beside him and took his face in her hands, lifting it up to level their gazes.

        "What?" Duncan blinked sluggishly. "Oh. Lucille," he tilted his head as if he couldn't orient. "Supper, yes," he pushed up from the table and wandered across the kitchen. He reached up and opened one of the cabinets, staring at the contents, one and all, but they didn't remind him of anything familiar. "Adam forgot the groceries, so--" he shook his head and walked aimlessly back across the tiled floor. An idea cambered him into a shallow drift toward the refrigerator. "Eggs would make a good supper, wouldn't they?" His words were all thick and halting as if he were drunk or brain-injured.

        Lucille became more and more afraid for him. When he finally stalled, stock still, in the middle of the kitchen, just weaving back and forth. she ran to the sink, filled a glass, and threw it in his face. "Duncan!"

        The dilated eyes stared down on her as if they had never seen her before, or as if she were a corpse newly risen.

        "Duncan, can you hear me? What has happened?"

        Duncan's eyes drifted sideways as he fought to focus. With all his strength he ascended to the present and looked at the thing which had so undone him. His eyes filled and his only thought as he collapsed to the floor was, How will I tell Sean?

        Duncan's next conscious awareness was of Joe popping a pill into his mouth and lifting a glass for him to drink.

        And the next, the table magically and suddenly set with Peking Duck and all manner of savory items. They were talking together, the Mayor and his wife, Lucille. Duncan felt something warm in his mouth. He chewed and swallowed. Wonderful. The prickly terror was receding. Another bite and he took back the fork from Lady Lucille, thanking her for her attentions.

        "Buddy?" Joe asked around a mouthful of some oriental version of spaghetti primavera. "How ya doin?"

        Duncan took stock. "I guess okay," he answered.

        "Dinner, okay?" Joe swallowed.

        "Oh, yes," Duncan forked up another chunk of duck.

        "Do you think you can tell us what happened?" Joe asked.

        Lucille's hand shot out to grab Joe's arm, but too late to silence him.

        "Hey, Luz," Joe complained. "If something has happened to Adam, we have to know. Maybe we can help." He turned back to look at Duncan as the Scot spit out the duck, gagging.

        "It's all right, Duncan," Lucille offered him some water, but he just shook his head.

        When he stopped choking, Duncan said, "He has left. We are no longer together. We will never be together again. I suppose he took the car. Maybe he hitched. Oh, yes, he must have hitched." Duncan thought a moment, "Yes, I went out to the garage bay, but the car was still there, and the Lincoln still in the drive. I thought I saw his shadow beyond the landgate, but I could not feel him any more."

        Lucille and Joe stared at each other. Neither could believe what Duncan was saying. Surely he exaggerated. "But what happened to make him leave?" Lucille asked. It was Joe's turn to grab her arm.

        Duncan shook his head, his bewilderment evident in every line of his broad features. "Did Kyle tell you that he and Sean were--um--dating, Joe?"

        Lucille and Joe grabbed each other's arms simultaneously.

        "What do you think about that?" Duncan asked.

        Joe cleared his throat, "Well, Buddy, to tell the truth--"

        "He came unglued," Lucille supplied, "I thought we wouldn't get him down off the ceiling for the rest of the week."

        "I don't mean any reflection on Sean or on you, Buddy--" Joe started awkwardly.

        "I reacted exactly the same way when I heard about it this evening. When Adam told me," Duncan said.

        "Oh," said Joe.

        "Oh, Duncan," Lucille added, "Oh, no."

        "I see," said Joe. "How have you managed to remain with Adam so long then?"

        "Because he was willfully blind to my bigotry, I guess," Duncan folded his napkin by his plate, his appetite now entirely gone. "And I was--I don't know. I suppose I just loved a person who happened to be the wrong gender."

        Lucille started to weep silently. Joe's arm slid around her back and he hugged her to his side. "I'm so sorry, Mac."

        "I don't know what I am," Duncan said in breathless, hopeless tones that clearly displayed he was devastated. "You will be happy to discover that Sean and Kyle are not an item, that they are only doing that so Sean can go see Mary Palmer."

        Lucille laid her head down on her arms and wept less silently.

        Joe looked over at Duncan and said only, "Thank you," in a whisper that sang a blues refrain all its own. "What can we do for you?"

        Duncan shook his head and swayed to the side. "You gave me--?"

        "Just a touch of the old Diaze, Mac. You remember, Valium? It takes the edge off quite nicely if you don't overdo."

        "Thanks," Duncan said, trying not to sound aloud how thoroughly ashamed he was to have been too incapacitated to even serve his guests supper. "I'll just go out for a walk. Maybe I can wait here for Sean to come home. You could take Lucille back to the guest room."

        "I can talk with Sean if you like," Joe offered. "Right before I have a really long talk with my son."

        Lucille looked up and sniffed, "Right after I beat the holy shit out of him."

        After reminding them how irresistible Sean was, and that it really wasn't Kyle's fault, that he must have thought he was taking part in an exciting and romantic conspiracy de coeur, Duncan took his somewhat wobbly, but sane, leave of them and strode out into the night and the blind sea breakers roaring down the long drop at the base of the cliff.

        An hour later, Duncan wandered back in, cleaned up the kitchen, and began to reorder his life. Sean would be leaving to get married soon. Adam was already gone. Joe and Lucille were busy at the center of things in Couver. He couldn't really go back there yet. Probably not for fifty years, minimum. Wouldn't help Joe's position in politics. Maybe he'd just tag along with Marak on his next trip to Africa and never come back. Doubtless Grace could use some help with her remote practice.

        He hadn't really thought this through. He hadn't been realistic. It was so impossible that he should ever have a son, he merely assumed that, having done the impossible, he wouldn't have to deal with the ordinary. Like what to do when the son grows up and goes away. The time had gone so fast, even secluded and together with just each other in this redone monastery. Who knows where the time goes?

        Oh, Adam, he thought, I hope you are less miserable than I, that you will have friends around you in this time. He shuddered. It crossed his mind that there were still a few of Cronos' ilk out there, and he prayed that Adam's loneliness and Duncan's own betrayal wouldn't drive him into another situation like that again. Some thoughtless portion of Duncan's soul just wanted to run out into the night and find him and hold him until the pain was gone, but that was impossible.

        Duncan was Adam's pain as surely as he was the cause of Adam's pain.

        He tried to remember what Joe had said about loving Ram, about not loving her enough. Surely this was the case, Duncan thought. For all my bravado, still I had not the courage to serve.

        "Pop?"

        Duncan's head snapped up from his arms. He had fallen asleep. "Sean?" Oh, God, Sean was already back. What was he going to say? How?

        Sean bounced up to him and threw his arms around Duncan's shoulders, "Oh, Pop, Dahm told me everything! I am so, so sorry. You should just beat me. Lucille offered to do it if you were so inclined. I deserve every bit of it. Oh, Pop, I never thought this would happen. Never."

        "Dahm told--?"

        "Kyle and Mary and I met him on the road coming home. We picked him up and drove him back into town so he could catch a bus. No," Sean answered Duncan's sudden stare. "I don't know where he's bound, Pop, but I made him swear on his sword he would email us once a week, so I can tell him when, when..."

        "When the wedding is arranged?" Duncan suggested.

        Sean lowered his head as he backed away. "I wouldn't be surprised if you disowned me. I have been so awful."

        "Do you love Mary Palmer, Sean?"

        Sean's bright face grew suddenly brighter, beaming into Duncan's darkness like a tower light.

        Duncan nodded his head, "Then be brave enough to get her, son, and all else be damned."

        Then he added, "And be brave enough to keep her, or you will be damned."

        Sean looked at his father quizzically.

        "Am I to meet your intended?" Duncan asked. "I take it she decided against coming out here after the situation with Adam."

        "Mary said she feels responsible for this and she will have nothing else to do with me until she hears from your own lips that she is forgiven. She made me take her back to her hotel. She says she will wait for your call in the morning and that you would probably be occupied this night with me," Sean started laughing, "She even said she wouldn't be surprised if I woke up an Immortal tomorrow, she expected you, rightfully, to be that angry with me."

        Duncan chuckled weakly, "Well, now there's a thought," he picked himself up and strode purposefully for the collection of kitchen cleavers and carvers.

        "Pop!" Sean seemed to have lost every ounce of his trademark self-certainty.

        Duncan never slowed his stride towards the cutlery.

        "Pop!" Sean screamed and backed away, pale as the ash in the long dead fire upstairs.

        Duncan counted three more seconds before he turned around to say, "You see how badly lying can hurt, even when you don't mean it?"

        Then the Highlander stalked from the room, silent as a jungle cat.

        Sean thought he would much rather have been beaten.

---