He realizes he’s been lost in thought and staring at Kait for quite a while. She’s staring back, eyebrows raised, waiting for him to snap out of it. “Sorry,” he says, looking away and reaching for his beer. A beat of silence. He can almost hear her deciding to ignore it. “You hungry?” she asks. “I think Duncan’s cooking supper.” “On Sunday?” “This is Sunday? I don’t know.” Another pause. Now he can feel her evaluating the sharpness in his voice, and not understanding why it’s there. “Okay,” she says, in the neutral tone that’s so perfect it should be trademarked to her. “What time?” “He said around seven.” “Okay.” She isn’t waiting for an explanation of how he found her. He knows she isn’t. That isn’t an important detail in the way Kait deals with the world. She’s already relaxed again, watching the baseball highlights with her head cocked in quiet absorption. He finds himself blurting it out anyway. “I overheard the new bartender telling Joe you were in a bar down here. Last week.” “Yeah,” she says absently. “Did you come here together?” It takes a few seconds before his words sink in, and Kait turns to give him an incredulous look. “Right. I go drinking with junior Watchers-in-training all the time.” “Is he to be yours, then?” A shrug. “Probably not. Mac made some kind of agreement that I won’t get followed everywhere.” Which sounds very sensible of Joe Dawson, less as a benefit to Kait than as protection for the person assigned to her. He thinks she’d tolerate about two days of close observation before she beat the hell out of the hapless new Watcher who drew the duty. Sensible, and practical too. He would’ve agreed to it himself. Save on manpower without the danger of losing the target; it’s quite obvious that Kait won’t be leaving her teacher again for a long time. “So what’s the new one’s name?” “Told you, I don’t think there is one.” “The one you were drinking with last week,” he clarifies. Hearing the faintest nasty prodding in his own voice. The set of her jaw telegraphs that she isn’t going to dignify the comment with a response. She takes one more deliberate swallow of beer and swings her chair around to face him. “What the hell is wrong with you today?” “What do you mean?” He knows what she means. He knows they weren’t drinking together. He also knows that the easiest way to start a fight with most people is by pretending ignorance of the fact that you’re being a total asshole. “You’re acting like you want to fight. You’re acting like Richie.” Methos snorts derisive laughter. Being compared to a twenty-five-year-old kid isn’t something that happens to him very often, and he tries to ignore the flicker of real anger in his chest. His anger isn’t alone. Kait looks at him almost coldly. “Don’t laugh at me.” “I’m not acting like *Richie*.” Her eyes narrow at him, fast. “Don’t fucking say that like it equals idiocy, Methos. You know what I mean.” “No,” he snaps, feeling heat rise in his face, and so glad that she’s finally arguing with him. “What do you mean? “You’re acting like something’s wrong and you don’t want to tell me. Like you want to fight so you can forget about it.” He tries to laugh again. He knows it’ll piss her off enough that she’ll walk away and probably disappear for at least two days, but he won’t have to listen to this, and he doesn’t understand the weak sound coming out of him that resembles a laugh not at all. “Methos.” He also doesn’t understand why it’s so hard to look at her. “What’s going on?” This is gentle for Kait: abrupt and tactless and vibrating with tension, but full of the fact that she’d already be out the door if she didn’t care about him. It’s too much. He can’t deal with the demanding concern. He turns away and looks at the bubbles rising in his beer. “I was worried about you yesterday,” he says, speaking so rapidly he almost trips over the words. It’s been two months and he thought he’d gotten past it in Rome. It’s happened before—like everything in his life, it’s happened more times than he can possibly remember—and he shouldn’t feel this way. He shouldn’t have brought the fear back with him. She’s silent, waiting, not getting it. He manages, “You weren’t...” >From the corner of his eye he sees Kait stiffen in understanding. His throat closes up so hard that it hurts. Two words and she knew what he meant. He tries to say something else and he can’t. “I didn’t see Mac all day,” she tells him, slowly. “I would have been home if I knew you were coming.” Methos knows it’s nothing but the simple truth. When he calls ahead to say he’s coming back, she’s always been waiting. Usually just to give him a grin, sometimes a hug, before going on with her day, but always there. He didn’t realize how much he expected it until she wasn’t. She wasn’t there and he had the hard flash of being sure she was dead. The same fear he purposely meant to put in her eyes when he walked in here today, wanting her to feel exactly like he did. The twist in his stomach was savage contentment that she was afraid for Duncan and Richie. He still wants her to feel it. He wants her to feel the five hours and nineteen minutes until the presence crawled up the back of his neck and he heard the door open and, “Methos, hey,” and the sudden boneless relief that left him unable to get out of his chair. How before she came home, he didn’t even have the nerve to ask Duncan if maybe they should worry about her, because he didn’t want someone else to agree that he was right to be worried. (cont) _____________________________________________________________ Get email for your site ---> http://www.everyone.net