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Teddy Bears' Picnic
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Chapter One
If you go down to the woods today, you're sure of a big surprise
If you go down to the woods today, you'd better go in disguise.The progress of the night was still pitch and chill when Adam Piersen slipped carefully from the warm bed and his lover's side and padded, silent as a wraith, over the cold plank flooring of Duncan MacLeod's fifth floor loft. He looked back only so long as it took to assure himself that Duncan was sleeping quietly, peacefully, that his sonorous breaths bore no trace of turmoil.
Then Adam descended the stairs to the second floor gym showers and opened the locker, fifth from the end, where he'd stowed his stuff. On went the shorts and then the sweats, the running shoes, and shirt, zip up sweat jacket, lastly the sweat band and shades, though it was still deepest night. He dug around in the laundry basket and pulled out a towel that wasn't too dirty. Then he closed the locker again and, squaring his shoulders, trudged bravely out to the alleyway, a horizontal bit of darkness in this even darker hour before dawn.
Reaching into the grey sweatjacket's pocket, Adam retrieved an elaborate watch and slipped it on his left wrist. Then he rotated his hand, palm up, and clicked on the illuminated mode. He hurried to the end of the alley and peered up Cambie Street. Checking his watch again, he began to fidget.
A pair of headlights appeared at the top end of Cambie, near the bay bridge. Adam relaxed. The deep green car rolled past slowly and Adam signalled the driver. The headlights blinked out briefly, and then the car passed, turning at the next intersection to circle the block.
Adam turned right, down the sidewalk, and took long, joint-stretching strides, trying to thaw out his new musculature, wondering why he never seemed to remember how uncomfortable being "in good shape" could be. He fumbled in his jacket for the keys and unlocked the lease car he'd parked at the service station two blocks from the dojo.
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All the way up Cambie and then a cut over on Pender two miles and he shut the rental down in the lot behind what seemed to be yet another brownstone in a line of such, north of the college. He really didn't need the car to go this distance, hardly five miles. It was for afterwards, when he went sprinting through the forest across the bridge from Stanley, in North Couver, hell and gone all the way across town. Adam would never make it back to the dojo before Duncan rose were it not for the car.He opened the door without knocking and entered wordlessly into the flourescent lights and tile floors of Ed's Gym. Only the serious need apply, Adam thought. Here were the truly driven mavens of hyperbulk and thin skin and cut, cut, cut. And sweat, sweat, sweat, Adam mused, settling onto a vacant weight bench in the corner. Actually it was his own bench. He'd bought it at the start of this endeavor, some two months ago, to accomodate his excessive length of back.
Adam unfolded said back its full length out on the bench and reached high over his head to release his shoulders and then wrapped his long fingers around the bar. He heard Ed move his direction. Damnation! Adam cursed silently. He still thinks I need to be spotted.
Well, at least they didn't laugh at him any more--not openly. That first day had nearly sent him back out the door, but Ed had stepped up, shown him how to build his lower back so he wouldn't hurt it when he started lifting. That was the day he'd ordered the bench and plunked down the price for the ticket to this purgatory of the flesh.
Adam rocked the weight out of its cradle and lowered it slowly over his chest, steadying his breathing and pulling his lower back into alignment. Ouch. He steadied his brains and pressed up the full extension of his long arms. Height had always been an advantage for him before. It was nothing but a pain in the butt now. Bulking muscles of this length was a difficult art. So Ed said. Ed was right. All the extra torsion caused by these long levers had to be accomodated.
Five. Adam recradled the weight and heard Ed move away to attend to one of the three other guests who frequented the gym at this godforsaken hour. Adam sat up slowly bent over his knees, released his back and then curled back up and stretched his neck against each tight trap. Then back down again and five, stop, stretch, and again, and...
Pecs, delts, biceps, and triceps, lats, and upper abdominals and...
In the middle of a fifty-rep, weighted sit up, Adam saw the sparkling dark encroach upon the periphery of his vision. It spread too rapidly for him to do anything but fall, thunk, off the bench.
He woke up a short while later, stacked in the corner like cordwood, with a cold rag on his forehead and a ready bucket near enough that he didn't have to spew on the floor.
Damn! He hadn't done this for weeks. He wiped his mouth and rose unsteadily, to go empty the bucket. He was almost more angry with himself that he couldn't remember how far he'd gotten in the situps and would probably have to start all over at the beginning.
Ed stopped Adam at the door to the showers and handed him his things.
"Enough," was all he said, but Adam understood and nodded.
Entering the shower room, Adam was glad to find it empty. It wasn't any big thing to pass out or throw up at Ed's. People did it all the time--one of those things as natural as sweating when you pushed yourself this hard. Still, Adam couldn't help taking it as a sign of weakness on his part. He couldn't afford to be weak. Not any more.
After taking care of the bucket--he'd have to find a replacement for the late-night dinner calories he'd just wasted down the Couver public works system--Adam opened his locker and sorted through the various vials and syringes.
Let's see, he thought, Tuesday. That would be--hmmm?--yes, two c's of depo and one of testadiol.
Just as Adam swabbed off the top of the depo vial, a voice sounded on the other side of the open locker door.
"You certainly are in good shape," the voice was breathy and falsely lifted out of what must have been it's more normal baritone's range.
Damnation! Adam put the vials into the pocket of his jacket. He didn't like to take the drugs home. He was too afraid Duncan would go snooping through his things. He wondered if he should just ignore the voice on the other side of the locker door, or if he should wind up for a witty retort. You just didn't hit on fellow patrons at Ed's, just wasn't done.
'Course that didn't stop the occasional assignation arranged in the parking lot, but...
"Maybe you and me could do a game of handball," the voice continued.
Adam pulled his jacket on and took the headband off, shaking the sweat out of his hair. "Don't play handball," he said curtly.
"Waaal, thas not how I heard it," the voice insinuated.
With that, Adam slammed the locker door closed and faced his tormentor. No one was there. A tug on his sweat pants directed Adam's attention downward. "Joe! What the hell are you doing here?"
Watcher Dawson grinned up from his perch in the old chair he used when his artificial legs were out for repairs or when the prostheses had worn an ulcer in what remained of his own legs. "Mission of mercy," Joe said.
"What?" Adam sat down on the narrow bench that ran the length of the aisle between the two banks of lockers.
"You're running through your Watchers--literally," Joe continued. "I had to drop Hensley off at the E.R. yesterday for angina. And Pamela says she's never been so--"
"My what?" Adam swiped at his face with the towel.
"You are killing them, Adam," Joe grimaced. "I'm on the duty today, and I came to ask you to forego your dash through the nine-mile woods, or I'm going to be burning out the bearings in this buggy for sure."
"My Watchers? Me? You have Watchers on me?" Adam glowered over the top of the towel.
"Well, not for much longer at this rate, Buddy," Joe chuckled. "You're burning them out faster than I can assign them."
"You had no right--!" Adam sputtered.
"Oh?" Joe tucked his chin down. "You aren't an Immortal?"
"But--"
"We haven't bothered you, have we, Adam?"
"No, but--"
"It's the same thing you were doing, that brief tour you took for Watcher Stroud when he had the flu in Paris five years ago," Joe commented.
"Yes, but--"
"Listen," Joe's tones turned fatherly, "if you skip the forest laps, I'll take you to a sumptuous luncheon."
Adam meant to say "no," but instead he heard himself ask, "Where?"
"Chez Hubert," Joe answered.
"Uptown?" Adam draped the towel over his lap. "Why?"
Joe tilted his head to one side and said nothing.
Adam rose. "All right, Kid. I'll skip the run. Today only. After that, pull the Watchers off and I promise I'll start submitting my own weekly reports on myself. I can't go to lunch, I have other--"
"Mac will be coming," Joe interjected.
The comment stopped Adam short and he stared down the long slope of his patrician nose at the Northwest Territories' Watcher Chief, studying the deceptive benignity that resided behind that salt and pepper beard, those kindly pale eyes.
"You haven't fooled anyone, Adam," Joe began slowly. "We all know what you are doing, have been doing, this past two months. We just can't figure out why you're doing it, or why you're doing it in secret."
"And this is any of your business because--?" Adam headed down the aisle towards the showers. His green eyes scrinched shut and he turned on his heels and came back to pull the cellular out of his locker. It wasn't there.
"That's right, Harold," Joe had the cellular in his hand and was speaking to the bodyguard Adam had employed to watch over Duncan when he was away from him. "Yes, it's Tuesday, MacLeod won't be teaching today. Just tail him until lunch and we'll take it from there."
"He's a Watcher?" Adam snatched back the phone.
"Who better?" Dawson shrugged.
Adam loomed over the Watcher, his face growing scarlet, his graceful hands curled into tremorous claws. Joe simply looked up at him, all innocence and trust.
A sound, like a verbal explosion, sputtered from Adam's lips and he drew back suddenly shaking his head and holding his right fist in his left, fighting for some control.
Joe smiled a close-mouthed grin and nodded knowingly. "'Roids'll do that to you. Give you rage fits and such. Raises hob with the old pecker though, don't it? Kinda ironic, actually, that you would chemically emasculate yourself on some kick to become Charles Atlas. Really ironic, don't you think?"
Adam's throat was so tight with rage he could hardly spit out his answer, "You don't want to know what I think!"
"Siel will be there and Granny," Joe offered lightly.
"The Shrink?" Adam hissed.
"She's a Neurologist with a Fellowship in Neuropsychology," Joe corrected him.
"Well," Adam wound the towel around his neck and hung on the ends, trying to catch his breath. "A rose by any other name--"
"Would surely smell better than your skanky bones," Joe finished for him. "Don't let me keep you from your shower, Adam."
"Aren't you afraid of rusting the axle?" Adam propped against a locker and planted a foot on the bench, clearly not done with this fight.
"Huh?" Joe repositioned the chair in the tiny space between bench and lockers.
"I just thought--the way things are going and all--you'd be coming in to soap me up," Adam sneered.
Joe shook his head and laughed, "Now there's a disgusting thought."
Adam was briefly miffed, wondering whether this were a slur on himself, his relationship with Duncan, whatever--. He decided it was and took a rather overwrought defensive action, which was offensive in the extreme. "You're a perky little wine, aren't you, Watcher?" he began.
Joe's bushy grey brows knurled down.
"Lovely pale coloring, decent bit of age, an amusing bouquet, with a dry, if irritating, palate," Adam paused and shook his head dolefully. "Lacking in the one character which would make a moderate vintner proud--Pity."
Adam was gone round the end of the locker row and splashing in the shower before Joe got it.
When he did, the Watcher bent over his lap choking and guffawing.
Chapter Two
Ev'ry Teddy Bear who's been good, is sure of a treat today.
There's lots of marvelous things to eat, and wonderful games to play.
Joe Dawson maneuvered from his chair to the comfy, velvet padding of the Chez Hubert's finest wingback, taking his place at the head of the table. Granny, "Dr. Ethel Grimes, to you, Old Man, and don't you forget it," and the reed-thin, tall and sinuous Princess Sibusile Zulu, settled themselves down in wingless chairs around the table, as Chieftan MacLeod held their chairs and said something suitably charming to each.
The wine steward, seeing they still had one seat left empty at the table, jostled their waiter and sought out the reason for the delay of the fifth in their party. The waiter shrugged, motioned towards the maitre d' and went on about his busy rounds of serving lunch. Which left the wine steward to decide for himself to approach the head of the table and whisper discretely in the host's ear.
Joe ordered them something light, a blushed spring wine which was the house special, and probably kept in vats in the basement. It was pleasant, if fruity, and just the start to what would in all likelihood be a disagreeable get together with the oldest living thing on the planet.
Ordering the wine put Joe in mind of Adam's joke earlier in the morning, and since it was his duty to report his morning watch, he regaled them with that.
"I do not understand," Siel looked questioningly at Ethel.
"It's a language thing," Ethel explained. "There are qualities to a wine, for judging it. There is clarity and color and taste, of course, and then--"
The wine steward returned, in perfect timing, and began to pour a taste in Joe's glass. Joe demonstrated, as Ethel continued.
"Then you rock the wine gently in the glass," Ethel pointed, "like that, and you see if it walks up the crystal and leaves a trail as it comes down."
Siel nodded. "But how is that a joke, Dr. Grimes?"
From the end of the table, MacLeod answered, "It's called 'legs.' A wine has to have legs." His attention and his eyes returned to the entryway, where they'd restlessly waited since he sat down.
"Oh," said Siel. "Oh, what a wretched thing to say!"
Joe took a sip and nodded to the steward who proceeded to fill all their glasses, except for Adam's, which he turned over.
"Shall we order, Ladies," Joe pulled back a little from the menu. The distance of easy focus seemed to be travelling farther down the length of his arms each year now. The "Ladies" ordered for themselves, and then Joe ordered, and then there was silence and waiting.
"Mac?" Joe called down the table. "What will you have?"
Duncan turned back towards the table and shook his head, lifting his palm.
"He'll have the salmon," Joe told the waiter. "And the shrimp marinade on the salad, and the onion soup to start." Then he folded the menu and handed it back. "We'll go with a nice, ummm," Joe reviewed their orders. He shouldn't have ordered the fish for MacLeod. It threw off the rest. "We'll let the steward decide what would be best with each order," he finished. That should keep the nervous little twit busy for the rest of the hour. Not the type to make decisions easily.
"He said he would come, Duncan," Joe addressed the Scot. "We need to get organized, or this won't work."
Duncan turned all the way back and placed his hands on the table. "This was your idea, Joe. Why don't you start."
"Okay," Joe drank some more wine. It wasn't a bad choice, at that. "We are all agreed that Adam hasn't quite recovered from the shooting. He's been acting strangely, even for him."
"I've been going over the tapes you lent me," Ethel joined in. "I haven't seen him for two months now, and the change is daunting. It isn't just the body-building thing, he doesn't look familiar, at least he's very different from the Dr. Piersen I knew before."
"Siel?" Joe reached for the bronze hand that was fussing over the dinnerware.
The Princess looked up. "I do not agree that there is anything wrong with Dr. Piersen," she said quietly. "The ways of the serpent are difficult to understand, but they are inevitable and unerring."
They all stared.
"I said it wrong," Siel apologized. "I--"
"No, Princess," MacLeod rested his hand on Ethel's shoulder and leaned towards Siel. "We understand the words. They are well-spoken. But, Siel, are you saying Adam is fated to act as he is doing?"
"Fated," Siel rolled the word around the lush cavern of her soft mouth. "No, I don't think so, Mr. MacLeod. I think that Fate conspires to make him take this course, and that the Ancients, the Serpents, surrender to Fate in order to surmount it--Fate, I mean."
Siel started to apologize again for her poor use of English as a second language, but Ethel interceded, saying it was their own poor understanding of English as a first language that was at fault-- that, and their minimal understanding of the concept of Serpents as the Swahili tribes understood it. Siel began yet another time to explain, but Adam appeared at the entryway, and their dinners began to appear before them, and the discussion was effectively forestalled.
Duncan started to rise, but Siel's silken fingers tapped his wrist and he settled back in his chair. She was right. This was Adam's entrance.
And what an entrance it was.
Duncan ticked off the changes they must see. There was the widened jaw musculature, the thickened neck, the way his pectorals pushed forward under the blousy silk of the Italian shirt, and his delts against the shoulder seams. Doubtless he'd taken out the shoulder padding. The long arms could no longer dangle down the length of his sides. They were pushed away from his body by the building lats, for which he compensated--as Duncan did himself--by bending his arms and shoving his hands into his pockets.
All the trademark "Adam things," the lean and casual, androgenous boy look of him, were now buried in a tall collection of very impressive secondary sexual characteristics, including the lifting hairline which he now covered in the curls and waves of hair gone uncut these past hundred days.
Duncan pawed at his own ruined mane, just beginning to recover from Adam's assault with the razor. Sometimes he wondered if the Old Man weren't growing his own hair out just to mock him.
The Highlander reminded himself--as he had on many occasions since Adam's return from the bullet wound that sent him back to his childhood--that this was still the Old Man, still--What the hell! Duncan had totally glossed over the suit in his initial assessment. Suit? Dear Lord, some Giorgio Armani thing, a deep midnight blue, cut blousy and loose, superbly draped. What snaky thing are you up to Adam, Old Man?
And all the while Duncan's thoughts blew round his skull in a chaotic sussuration, Adam strode the distance from the entryway to their table by the sunny window. The entire room first hushed, then scurried behind the path he made, as if he owned the prow and wake of a tall ship. The ripples even extended ahead of him as the wine steward set the bottles before each of them, nearly tipping the white wine he'd placed at Granny's setting.
The poor man was visibly shaking by the time Adam reached them.
Duncan kicked the extra chair back, but the Old Man ignored it, leaning over the table, chattering away at the steward, almost too fast for the Highlander to follow.
"Non, non, non," Adam said, picking up Granny's wine and trading it for Joe's. "C'est entièrement erroné. Ici," he snatched up Siel's wine and traded it for Duncan's. "Comme cela, et comme cela, et comme ceci. Non," Adam paused and peered at the label on Duncan's bottle. He stared across the table at the steward as if he were looking at a dog, a very mangy dog of no account. Then the jaw slacked a bit and Adam's more familiar lines and planes began to show through as he grinned and shrugged. "C'est bien," he said more softly. No, no, no, that's all wrong! Like this and this and like that.
The poor steward breathed--probably his first inspiration since Adam's arrival.
Adam reached in his pocket and tossed some keys and then the wine bottle to the steward. "Allez prendre un bon Bourgogne dans votre cave spéciale." Go pick up the Burgundian wine from the special cellar.
Adam pulled his chair out a little farther and sat down, upright as a soldier. When the steward made no move to leave, he added, "Je m'excuse si je suis grossier. Vous apprendrez." I apologize for the rudeness. You will learn.
"I will have him bring something more suitable for that--Salmon, is it?" Adam glanced at Duncan's lunch.
Duncan started to answer, but Adam had summoned their waiter. How, exactly, was not clear to any of the diners at table. "Dites Jacgue, je prendrai comme d'habitude," Adam was saying to the man in a whisper. "Y a-t-il toujours autant de monde ici au déjeuner?"Tell Jacque I will have my usual. And tell me, is it always so busy here for lunch?
"Oh mais il n'y a pas tant de monde que ça aujourd'hui," the waiter answered, also in a whisper, as respectfully as a gameskeeper reporting to the Lord of the Manor. Oh, yes, it's really not all that crowded today.
"Please," Adam addressed the table when the waiter was gone, "don't wait on my account. My lunch will be along directly. Please, begin." To Duncan he said, "You don't usually order the fish, Duncan. I didn't think you liked seafood."
"Didn't think I--?" Duncan sputtered. "What the hell is this!"
Adam's long fingers--apart from his eyes, seemingly the only portion of him that hadn't changed-- played over the water goblet at his place setting. "I rather expected that would be my question," Adam said casually. "You did invite me? No?"
"I mean the--" Duncan's large hands gestured over the suit. "And your speaking like--. And--"
Adam chuckled but his face kept its hard lines, never joining in the mirth. "I don't think I can be faulted for your inviting me to one of my own restaurants."
"Your--?" Duncan stammered and rolled over the "r" for what seemed like centuries.
"Hubert," Adam sketched the tiniest bow, "at your service. Mi chez is su chez." He picked at Duncan's plate and toasted him with a fleck of fish to emphasize the convoluted pun.
Granny pushed back from the table and watched them over the rim of her glass.
Siel laughed softly and glanced up from her medallions of beef and a more than respectable Cabernet Sauvignon.
"Mac, my man," Joe grinned widely from the head of the table. "I believe we've been had."
"Bastard!" Duncan grumbled. "Just how many lies am I supposed to--."
"I told you," Adam sighed. "Omission does not constitute--. Oh, never mind. Here." He plopped a very thick, book-size Cambridge organizer on the table next to the Highlander's as-yet-untouched fish. "The complete listing of all my holdings, bank accounts, real estate, investment--"
The waiter returned with a large bowl full of--something. He set it before Adam and backed away.
"Marvelous!" Adam crooned, picking up his spoon and diving in. Mid-bite, he glanced over at the Scot who was thumbing through the notebook and cursing under his breath. "You really should try this, Duncan. It's the most wonderful stew in the entire world, of all time."
Duncan glanced over at the bowl and made a face.
"I know it doesn't look like much, but really--here," Adam raised a spoon towards the Highlander's scowling mouth.
The sudden feral spark in Duncan's eyes forced Adam's offer back into the bowl.
Adam looked away from the Scot's rage-filled glower and he spoke, instead, to his lunch. "I can have Jacque come over to the loft some night and make it for you. The tales he tells are almost more delicious than the stew.
"Je sais à quel point vous aimez afficher votre français," he added. And I know how much you love to show off your French.
Granny turned her chair sideways and leaned over her lap, choking. Siel patted her back solicitously and translated for Joe. "He says, um, Dr. Piersen is remarking on how very much Mr. MacLeod likes to show off his French."
"Fuck you!" Duncan hissed just loudly enough to turn several heads at the tables nearby.
"Ah, vous dites toujours les choses les plus douces, mon amour," Adam batted his eyes. Oh, you always say the sweetest things, Love.
"I'll plus douce you, you--" Duncan rose over the Old Man like a threatening storm.
"Sit down," Adam said evenly, "and I'll order you something you like. Please, MacLeod, you're making a scene."
Duncan slumped back down. "I'm making--? I'm making--!"
Again, without apparent signal, the waiter was immediately at Adam's side. He ordered the rack of lamb with pear slices and mint-basil sauce, and he reminded the man to get the steward and his keys back from the vault.
"I make them nervous," Adam apologized obliquely for the service. "I never come here. They don't know what to do with the boss in the house." He pushed the empty bowl away from him and appropriated Duncan's neglected salmon, waiting for someone else to pick up the conversation.
Dawson poured another glass and began. "We spoke this morning about your--um--changes, Adam. We thought you might shed some light on the mystery."
Adam chewed thoughtfully on the fish and swallowed. "I might," he smiled, his lips parting just enough to show his teeth, edge-on-edge, "if you can tell me why this is any of your business."
"This was actually my idea," Duncan said soberly. "I am concerned."
"Oh, well," Adam finished the last bite, wiped his mouth and set his napkin beside his plate, taking far too long to fold it. "I should think it would be obvious," he began.
"It is," said Siel quietly. Everyone, even Adam stared as she continued. "The Ancients become new again by the adder stone," she proclaimed.
Adam looked at Duncan. Joe looked at Granny.
"When the time is come for changing," Siel explained, "then passing through the stone will take the old skin away and the Ancient Serpent is reborn, newly made. It is the magic of His immortality."
"An adder stone," Siel reached inside the neck of her blouse and pulled up a pendant which had hung by a golden chain around her neck. It was a small round stone with a perfect hole in its center which was part of the stone's form and not drilled in. She unhooked the chain and handed it to Ethel, who handed it to Duncan. "Oh, Princess Siel," Adam laughed, "Yes, exactly so. I have been shedding my old snakeskin."
The rack of lamb appeared, with the Burgundian and the keys and the steward, who had managed somehow to lock himself in the vault. Adam calmed the man down in his superb French, while Duncan began to eat, despite his very ill humor.
"I thought you were French-impaired, Buddy," Joe remarked.
Adam folded a fifty-dollar bill into the shaken steward's palm and dismissed him. "I keep trying to tell you that none of you know me, but no one ever listens."
"We're listening now, Adam," Duncan said between bites and hums about how wonderful the food was.
"All right," Adam said lightly, "though I can hardly do justice to our Dear Princess' explanation. I am--," he thought a moment, "involved with a stunning and powerful man."
Duncan wiped his mouth and stared.
"And," Adam continued, "I have decided it is time to stop acting the perpetual adolescent dolt and be more--, more."
The smoky eyes narrowed as Adam's hands lifted up like a fisherman's lie.
"I just wanted to make myself a worthy partner," Adam said, more simply. "To be more honest, to stop hiding what I am."
"And that would be--?" Duncan murmured.
"Well," Adam ignored the near-jibe. "A grown-up, for one. After the second shooting--well, I have come to think that the child I became for a while, Moth, is no more like me than Adam Piersen, Research Drone and aging student, is like me. I am an old, used-up, beaten-up warrior, but I am also a survivor. I have decided--as Duncan has so often reminded me--that living is more than just not dying. I am laying claim to my life, to the truth of it--if you will."
Duncan turned towards Dr. Grimes, "What do you think, Doctor?"
Ethel scowled. "Perhaps this is not the best--."
"Oh, do go on, Granny." Adam's disrespectful enthusiasm overwhelmed Ethel's discretion.
"I think you had a crisis of identity with the head wound, Dr. Piersen," Ethel plunked her goblet with a flick of her pale finger and it rang like a bell. "And now, now I think you're trying to take Duncan's identity for your own. It's a common compensation--for children," she finished.
Duncan nodded imperceptibly as he gauged Adam's reaction.
There was none apparent.
"You could pick a worse example, I suppose," Ethel couldn't help adding, she was so thoroughly out of sorts with the both of them.
"You haven't said anything for a while, Dawson," Adam turned their attention to the head of the table. "What do you think?"
"I think it's time for dessert," Joe said, turning his wine bottle upside down, with nary a drop left to spill.
Adam cupped his hand and drifted it under his nose in small, soft circles.
The cognac and raspberry torts appeared immediately.
And by the time the coffee was served, the conversation had all but expired.
Except for Siel's eloquent tale about The Serpent and the Queen of Sheba, an ancient version of The Lady and The Snake.
Chapter Three
If you go down to the woods today, you'd better not go alone Adam stood at the sink, his blue silk shirt rolled up, his arms elbow-deep in suds, staring across the loft at the old tapestry on the wall behind the bed. Duncan puttered around behind him, putting away the groceries they'd brought back from Markham's on their way home from Chez Hubert.
It's lovely down in the woods today, but safer to stay at home.
The Highlander hadn't said very much since lunch, except to demand that the Old Man pay for the groceries this time.
So they came home silently to a sink-full of dishes and the bright wash of late afternoon sun fading the loft into a dusty tableau. Adam took off his new suit coat and started with the dishes. Duncan started sorting through the bags.
"Don't you think," Adam wondered how strange his voice sounded in the dim, quiet flat. "Don't you think it's time we changed out that rug behind the bed?"
Duncan looked up and walked over behind Adam, siting behind his left shoulder. "No."
"Just that? No?" Adam twisted around as Duncan returned to his sorting.
"Then: No, absolutely not. How's that?" Duncan folded the last paper bag and added it to the stack on the counter, crunching them down noisily.
"Because---?" Adam picked up the towel and started drying.
"I--"
Duncan had pulled in a deep breath before he began his answer. Adam was sure the expected diatribe would be forthcoming, but he was wrong.
"I don't know, Adam. I just don't know."
Adam wiped his hands dry and walked over to lay them lightly on Duncan's back as the Highlander bent over, putting the paper sacks in a lower drawer. He might have touched the Scot with a brand, the effect would hardly have been different.
Adam returned to the sink, grateful his chore lasted longer than his lover's. "You want to talk about this?" he asked finally.
"I wouldn't know what to say, Adam," Duncan's initial fluster had toned down to a charmingly distracted, dreamy tune.
Adam watched the man standing at the window and wondered if he could have so misjudged his measure after all the two of them had passed through together. "Maybe if you start with what is bothering you most this instant."
"I don't know. I'm sorry, Adam, I just don't know."
Adam stacked the plates and let the water out of the sink. He walked around the kitchen island and strode over to the couch where he let his sore muscles down carefully and melted into the black leather and soft cushions, trying to become as small and unintimidating as was possible. "You're angry with me, Duncan," he said.
"No," the Highlander never moved from his place by the window. "Not really. No. It's just--"
"Yes?"
"Why are you doing this?" Duncan turned slowly away from the window and pinned Adam in the bright focus of smoky eyes and wordless accusation.
"You didn't understand my explanation at lunch?" Adam made the words light, but he braced himself physically against the Scot's glaring judgment.
"I understood it," Duncan moved closer and settled himself stiffly in the deep chair opposite the couch, with the thick coffee table still between them. "I just didn't believe it." He leaned forward, elbows on knees.
"You aren't stunning?" Adam tried mightily to turn the mood.
Duncan reached in the pocket of his jacket and slapped down two syringes on the table. Smack. "I want you to stop this," he said.
"I will, Duncan," Adam couldn't help moving into a more optimal position, both feet squarely on the floor. "Another three months and I won't need them in any case."
"Now," Duncan said darkly.
"Much as I would like to oblige you, Child," Adam felt the blood rushing to his shoulders as his new musculature pumped defensively. "I cannot do that. Not yet."
"I hate this!" Duncan yelled suddenly. "And I want it to stop! Now!"
Adam drew back in confusion. It wasn't at all like the Highlander to be so out of control. "What?"
"This--," Duncan sputtered and waved his broad arms wide. "All of this--"
"What?" Adam whined. "What?"
"You," Duncan's general distress came into fearful focus. "You."
Adam closed his eyes. "I don't understand, Duncan."
"I liked you the way you were, Adam. I don't know you any more."
Adam couldn't think where to start with his objections to that statement. He decided on, "Like?"
"I still love you, damn it! I just don't like you very much lately," Duncan's words came out as if he had just realized them.
Adam put his hand over his mouth. "I see," he said quietly. "Tell me, Duncan, Old Dear, just what exactly worries you most? Is it the drugs I'm taking now? Or is it the fact that when I stop taking them, the muscles will stay, but the impotence will resolve?"
"What?" Duncan sat back.
Adam rose from the couch and began to pace slowly around Duncan's chair. "You don't trust me. You have forgiven me, but you still don't trust me. I was mistaken when I assumed our lovemaking was proof of your trust in me."
"What are you talking about?" Duncan turned in his chair, his eyes never leaving the course of Adam's circling.
"What you trusted was your own strength, Highlander." Adam's words were distinctly passionless. "You have never really loved me after all."
"What!" Duncan shrieked.
Adam's beautiful hands floated up, palms down. "You have been very, very good to me, Duncan, and I know you are fond of me, but you do not attain."
"Attain?"
"The measure, Duncan. My measure, I suppose," Adam sighed. "I hate to admit this, Child, but I am every bit the judgmental old bastard that you pretend to be."
"Well, at least you have that right," Duncan answered too swiftly, having finally gotten to a part of the conversation he thought he understood. He crossed his arms over the broad barrel of his chest. "What are you saying--I'm afraid of you?"
"More so every day," Adam agreed. "The stronger I get, the less time we spend in bed doing anything but sleeping."
"Oh, and that couldn't have anything to do with your, your--," Duncan waved his hand in the general direction of Adam's crotch.
"And you noticed this exactly when?" Adam asked.
"Two, maybe three, weeks ago," Duncan answered indignantly. "Whenever you started these dreadful shots."
"Try three months ago, Darling," Adam corrected him.
"Really?" the Scot's mind went scrambling back over their many encounters, trying to think how he could have missed such a thing, how he could have been so blind. But then, Adam could be amazingly distracting. "I don't want you to be me, Adam," he said stupidly, not really knowing what he wanted, except to have everything back the way it was.
"I don't want to be you, either, Duncan," Adam changed course and headed for the bureau to change out of his suit and into the larger version of his more familiar "sodding about" fare. "But it would seem I have no choice in the matter."
Duncan found himself looking away as Adam stripped off his shirt and slacks. He made himself look back, made himself stop repainting the body he saw before him with an image of the Old Man as he had been before. He studied the cut planes of the long back, the tight buttocks. No wonder it had taken so long to realize Adam's incapacity, when Duncan had been blinding himself willfully the whole time.
Adam was right. He didn't like the strength in that new flesh at all. It did make him afraid.
"And I suppose you are wondering," Adam just stood there, naked, letting the dark eyes have their fill, "how it is I have not been afraid of you?"
"Nooo," Duncan's face twisted in surprise, "Why would you be?"
Adam chuckled and placed his hands against the small of his back, stretching out a kink. "Why would you be afraid of me, then?"
"Because--I--don't--trust you," Duncan watched Adam nod with each word. "Oh."
"Right," Adam nodded again. "Because you don't really love me."
"No," Duncan tucked his solid chin down in petulance, "No, that has nothing to do with this."
"It doesn't?" Adam sat down on the side of the bed and pulled on his new jeans.
"No!" Duncan tried to think where this conversation was going, all the while he stared, mesmerized by the washboard belly, tightening as Adam pulled on his pants. "No," his concentration returned. "I would never hurt you, Adam."
"I know that," Adam disappeared for a moment under the soft sweater and then appeared again, pop, through the neck hole. "But you could.
"And you have," he added.
Duncan sighed. Adam was right. He'd smashed him a good one when Adam drove them to the sunken caves to cure the Dark Quickening. "But that's different, Adam," he argued.
Adam wandered back to the couch and draped his long frame its length. "How?"
"What?" Duncan was so involved in his answer that he didn't actually hear the question when it came. "Oh, it's just," how to say this and not anger the Old Man? "You have been a murderer, a brigand, and a, a rapist, Adam. I have every reason to fear you."
"I see," Adam chewed on his lower lip. "And you are afraid I might--What?--revert to my past and take you against your will?" He tried not to laugh as he said this.
"That would be more likely than my suddenly succumbing to the Dark Quickening and ravaging you," Duncan said, trying to explain why he had more reason to fear Adam than the other way around.
"God, I hope not," Adam rolled onto his back and stretched his hands high over his head, "Once around that block was all the tour I ever want to take."
All the fuzziness of the preceding argument suddenly resolved to stunning clarity around Adam's words, and the room was thrown into an electric stasis.
"What?" Duncan gasped.
Adam's head snapped Duncan's direction.
"What did you say?" Duncan's jaw set as he asked the question again.
The amber and green eyes lidded halfway. "I'm sure you busted my nose," Adam said nonchalantly. "It's never been the same since. Not to mention that thirty foot toss-the-Old-Man-off- the-parapet trick after--" Adam struggled to take back his mistake, only to make another. Not a good time to bring up Sean Byrnes brutal murder, now was it?
"Adam!"
The Eldest Immortal pushed up to sitting and folded his hands in his lap. "I thought--I thought you remembered, Duncan. I thought you mentioned it just now because you remembered and wanted to talk about it. I thought we hadn't discussed it before now because--Oh, hell, I didn't think, haven't thought about it for--what is it now? Two years, at least."
"Haven't thought about what, Adam?"
"It wasn't you, Duncan. It has nothing to do with us. I have never blamed you--or myself, either, for that matter. It was just something that happened."
All the black, aching regrets that belonged to that time rose up in the Highlander and darkened the loft more surely than the coming night. He seemed to hear his own voice, far away, asking again what Adam meant.
He hardly felt the long arms tighten around him. Hardly heard the tender words, smoothing away his anxious wonderings, pulling him back from the brink, the truth. He heard his question change its course.
"If I did hurt you," Duncan was not ready to know this. He refused it with all his will. "If I did hurt you so badly, then why aren't you scared of me?"
A cloud of gentle laughter drifted down over him.
"If you were to pick up your katana and cut me to ribbons, Duncan," the dear voice spoke so certainly.
"I would die unafraid."
Adam was right, Duncan thought, I do not know how to love at all.
"Come on, Duncan," Adam encouraged. "Help a bit. That's it. Just a little more."
The stepson of Loch Schiel's bonnie banks felt prodded and poked and pushed up to sitting with pillows padded against his back. Adam kept prattling on with this or that praise about his every change in position.
"Open your mouth," the Old Man said.
Duncan opened his mouth. Really, he was so definitely not in the mood--but then, Adam was so infrequently aroused of late, he didn't dare refuse. Wait a minute! Duncan's eyes shot open.
"Isn't that the most wonderful stew you ever tasted?" Adam crowed. "I had Jacque cook us up an extra batch and send it over. Duncan? You can swallow now."
Duncan swallowed and took his bearings. He was in bed, in the loft. "What time?" he managed to mutter.
"Not quite midnight, Duncan," Adam answered, dipping a long finger into the bowl for a taste. "Here." He ladeled up another spoonful and offered it to the Scot.
This pass, Duncan took the spoon and the bowl and fed himself. Ambrosia. Adam was right. The ways of the Serpent are unerring. Hadn't Siel said so?
"Adam?" Duncan set the empty bowl on the bedside table and looked back to see Adam sitting, cross-legged, at the end of the bed, playing with Dawson's bear.
"If you go down to the woods today," he was singing, holding Master Ted up by the waist. "You better not go alone."
"I don't believe that was written for the minor key," Duncan commented. "And isn't that my robe you're wearing?"
"Watch out, Teds," Adam whispered in the bear's soft ear, "he's got designs on us. Now he's after getting us disrobed. Nasty man. Just think of it."
"All right, Adam," Duncan said wearily. "What happened?" He had a very vague recollection that they had fought about the drugs Adam was using, but it really wasn't clear.
"I was cruel to you, Duncan," Adam answered, setting the bear aside. "I will try not to do that again. I am sorry."
"Did you get to the part about why you're pumping up like this?" Duncan yawned and stretched. "Something about you had to be me?"
Adam chuckled and crawled on all fours over the counterpane towards him. "I think it was more in the nature of: If you won't be Duncan MacLeod, then somebody has to be, and I'm the only option." With this last word, the Old Man pounced playfully. Duncan caught him in his arms and rolled them over, Scot on top, Eldest Immortal, breathless and happy, on his back.
Duncan brushed Adam's bangs off his forehead. "I still don't understand what you mean."
Adam sighed. "I didn't mean for you to know this, but I'm finding it ever more difficult to lie to you, Boy Scout. Tell me, how many heads have you taken in the past hundred days?"
"None," Duncan answered, pushing up to kneeling either side of Adam's waist. He undid the belt of his purloined robe.
"And why do you think that is?" Adam giggled as the Scot feathered a tickle across his belly.
"I hadn't really thought about it," Duncan said idly, trailing the soft terry tie down the front of Adam's newly resculpted torso. "I more or less put it down to what you said about the more aggressive Immortals being the most likely to die off first and the Gathering would, in and of itself, eventually wind down."
"Damn!" Adam shouted suddenly and threw Duncan off him--and off the bed--so fast, the Highlander could only stare up, stunned, from the floor as he watched the Old Man refasten the robe, swipe a long arm under the bed for his sword and go dashing down the stair well on the other side of the lift.
Duncan felt the aura then. Another Immortal had entered the building. It was a weak hum yet. Must be down on the ground floor. Duncan scrambled for another robe and descended the stairs cautiously.
He made it to the top of the first flight, the hall outside the showers when the alleyway detonated in a brilliant fury, blowing out the windows of the ground floor. Duncan gripped the railing and held against the blast amidst a crystalline shower of tiny, wounding shards.
When he could at last draw breath again, the first thing the Highlander said was, "Adam!"
