Fifth Bar by savespace savespace@opendiary.com homepage: http://opendiary.com/entrylist.asp?authorcode=D135233 This story is rated ADULT for a couple of bad words. Feedback appreciated. ..... It takes Methos a couple of hours to find her. He starts to get annoyed after he’s checked four bars without success, and the annoyance surprises him. It’s the middle of the afternoon and she has no reason to think anyone would be looking for her. Middle of a weekend afternoon, the house too quiet with Richie sprawled on the couch under the Sunday paper, Duncan outside doing something industrious, and before he knew it Methos was heading into the city. The bitch of being downtown in a city is that you can’t look for someone without their knowing when you’ve found them. Unless you happen to see your quarry someplace like New York’s avenues, those huge expanses that let you look almost forever, way down the island, the streets that Methos paced almost obsessively after he watched each being built. Their size amazed him, that any city would have the foresight to give that kind of space to movement. The amazement had nothing to do with the Game. He’s never actually stalked another of his kind through New York—not to kill, at least—but he knew with first glance that those avenues would be the easiest of urban places to follow a head. Enough space to see from a distance without activating presence. Not like this city. This one has the long narrow blocks that defeat his sense, because it triggers when he has no idea where in the circle the other Immortal could be. Not that he has an idea now. He’s been hoping for four bars that he would feel it. He has to shake his head briefly, standing next to a newspaper vendor, to remind himself of the place and time. He must have been standing there too long because the man’s watching him doubtfully, one hand under the shelf where people rest their coffees. Methos moves on. Kait’s in the next one. He feels it before his hand touches the brass rail door, and she’s looking up when he walks inside. Of course she is. Eyes scanning with that razor-vision that he’s been seeing on faces for so many thousands of years, the fight-ready shine that sends instinctive adrenaline coursing through his body in the split-second before she realizes it’s him. Methos suddenly wishes that he hadn’t come looking for her. He could have done without the reminder that she never looks scared when she senses another Immortal. That she looks almost hungry. She's so young for that predator gleam and it bothers him at the same time that he’s glad to see it, because a healthy working ease with murder increases her odds of seeing future centuries. She comes forward quickly and stops a few feet away, making him frown until she demands, “What’s wrong?” in a voice that broadcasts fear with only two words. He understands and feels his stomach twist. “Nothing, Kait. They’re fine. Everything’s all right.” An instant of relief is chased by mild confusion as she studies him. Her head tilts to the right just barely //tell me what’s wrong// but he doesn’t respond to the unspoken question, and naturally she doesn’t push it. “Kait, there a problem here?” The voice startles Methos so much that he nearly jumps, and he really looks at his surroundings for the first time. On entering he’d automatically clocked the other three people and their positions, the typical sports-bar layout, the exit door in the back, and on a deeper level the closest things that could be used for defense or weapons. He hadn’t paid specific attention. A thickset man with salt-and-pepper hair is watching him from behind the bar, one large hand paused in the act of wiping a glass. Kait glances around to acknowledge his question. “No problem.” The bartender eyes Methos, clearly suspicious, but after a moment he grunts in assent and returns his attention to the glass. She looks back at him. “Want a beer?” “Yes.” Methos thinks he’d like a couple of beers in quick succession to help him deal with the shock of a stranger who knows Kait well enough to be protective. He can’t remember this happening before, even when he was gone for almost six months. Even though the stranger is only a surly bartender who doesn’t rate an introduction. He follows to where she was sitting. There’s a glass of amber ale next to an open book that he vaguely recognizes as something she’s reading for university, and a folded sports section with penciled notes next to the baseball scores. Kait climbs back on her barstool, leaning forward, and the bartender glances toward her almost immediately. She motions toward her beer and toward Methos. He has a feeling that he wouldn’t have had a drink for at least twenty minutes if she hadn’t ordered it for him, never mind that there are only two other customers in the place. Leave it to Kait to find the most taciturn bartender in the city. His beer gets drawn and delivered in silence, and the man retreats to the other end of the bar to watch ESPN on a corner television. The drink’s halfway to his mouth before he realizes that no money changed hands. He glances sharply at Kait. “You have a tab here?” “Uh-huh.” It’s a lot more familiarity than he thought she had with any place. She misses his look because Sportscenter's started playing on the nearest screen and she’s watching it, leaning back with one arm hooked around the side of her chair, half-turned toward him. Methos tries really hard to remind himself that he shouldn’t be pissed off. That her open posture says she doesn’t know he’s pissed off. He takes a long sip of his beer before glancing at her again. She’s sitting with the heels of her sneakers hooked on the top rung of the barstool underneath her. Looking about fourteen for an instant, all baggy jeans and Converse sneakers. A tomboy fourteen. Sometimes it amazes him that she manages to get served in bars at all. She’ll need altered identification very soon, and she’ll have to replace it much more often than he does. He doesn’t think she can ever pass for more than twenty-five. First death at age seventeen is going to screw up her future more than she probably knows. She’s wearing a red fleece that he thinks is Richie’s, though he could be wrong. The two of them treat clothes like community property. Always digging through each other’s rooms for things to wear. They do the same to MacLeod’s closets whenever he isn’t around to chase them away. It probably stems mainly from their combined inattentiveness to laundry, but Methos can’t deny that he finally felt comfortable in the house when his own clothes were being casually borrowed by the younger Immortals. Pack dynamics: a basic sign that he was accepted. It’s been centuries since he stayed with a group of his kind for any length of time. It isn’t common. It’s dangerous. Your defensive edges get numb when the approaching presence of other Immortals happens so often in your daily life. He knows this. And keeps coming back to stay with them anyway. "Methos?" (cont) _____________________________________________________________ Get email for your site ---> http://www.everyone.net