Disclaimers and Warnings: They aren't mine, folks.

This story is slash, guys. That is, contains references to two men engaged in acts of a sexual nature. With each other. Comprende? So if you're not old enough for reading this to be legal in your place of residence, or if this type fiction is distasteful to you, please leave now. You have been warned.

Like most fanfic writers, I thrive on feedback. So please mail me at tarshaan@moonlit-eyrie.com!

Sleeping With the Devil

How did we come to this?

What happened, Mac? One minute you're shouting at me again; the next I'm up against the wall and you're kissing me senseless. And five thousand years of self-control melts away like so much candle wax, so that here I am, half a night later, watching you sleep and running full tilt into brick walls in my head. Trying to find a way I can stay, and stay alive.

I didn't even know you wanted me.

No regrets, you said. Over the one feeble protest I managed to make, somewhere in between shedding the first of our clothes and the last: no regrets. So what am I doing sitting here at 3am, watching you clutch a pillow to your chest in my place, getting colder and colder by the minute?

You didn't like it when I left the bed. Your bed... but you accepted the pillow in my stead without ever quite waking up, at least. And that, right there, is the problem. If this could just be sex.... But you don't do just sex, and I can't afford for it to be anything else. If I could, or you did, or we were--well, if. If if could change the world, then I'd still be here in the morning.

Damnit, MacLeod. I was doing just fine with unrequited lust. What the hell'd you have to seduce me for?

And you don't understand, I know. Won't understand, I suppose I should say. My world's falling apart, at least I think it is; and I'm sitting here worrying about keeping my tenses straight? See what you do to me? Communicating nothing whilst maintaining precise grammatical language; it's an art I'd thought I'd perfected in the long ago. Pretend my heart's not breaking, that I'm not the one breaking it, deny the pain by making it my choice. No one ever said I was strong, Mac.

You had enough trouble with the Horsemen, though. Still do. I guess Kronos took away all you thought you'd known about me; knocked for a sixer the image you'd spent so much time building. The very same one I'd been doing my best to dismantle slightly less dramatically.... And Cassandra, spouting her truth over and over 'til it must seem like the only one. What's the use in telling mine? It's only one more version, after all. No closer to what really was than any other. No; if you're so determined to have truth, feel free to use theirs. Reality must be out there somewhere--but reality of course never did have any room for truth. Anyone's.

The thing is, you see, the Horsemen aren't everything, not by a long shot. And who knows what will come crawling out next, if I stay this visible? Or who they will destroy when they do.... You'll say that you'll accept it, of course. That you'll take that risk, that we'll deal with it together, when it comes. That you can accept it. You may even fool yourself into believing it. But nothing's changed between today and yesterday except some sheets now desperately need to meet the washing machine. Maybe it's enough for you to mask the problems--at least until the next time.

Because you didn't accept it yesterday. Didn't accept that the Horsemen were lurking in my past, didn't accept that I had been one of them. Didn't accept that your friend was once Death, that your friend had once been the nightmare small children woke screaming from, that their parents lived in fear of. You don't accept it, you don't know how. You'll easily believe in change for the worse; but not for the better. Won't see that a really bad guy can become good, with just a little more effort than the reverse, and without the aid of magic springs or holy men. That all it takes is the desire to change, and the strength to accept what you've done.

Is that it, then? Is that why you find it so hard to believe in me? After all, who wants to admit, even to themselves, especially to themselves, that they've been everything any decent person would find abhorrent? Who really has the strength of will to choose to live with crimes that horrific, when it's so much easier to simply not acknowledge decency and stay that way forever. Who on earth would make that choice, that decision? Is that how little belief you have in me now?

Or is it simply that that's how little faith I have in myself?

I suppose we could go on in the hope that the past will stay there, but see how well that particular strategy worked with Kronos... there are centuries you really don't want to know about, Mac. More importantly, there are centuries I really don't want you to know about. Oh, don't bother, MacLeod; I'm not about to make excuses for anything I've done. I will live with the consequences, whensoever they should choose to come knocking again, and I will live with the memories. The things I did, I did. And the other things, they happened. If you could leave the past in the past--and I couldn't stand to have your pity, Mac. Not to mention that vengeance is vastly overrated, and most certainly not worth your dying for.

Gods, Mac, don't wake up! It's too much to hope for that you'd simply let me leave if you did. Too much to ask that you'd simply listen to what I have to say. So just slip back into dreamland, sigh into the pillow, snuggle a bit closer under the blankets.... yes, that's right, MacLeod. Dream on, Mac, and whatever you do don't open your eyes....

I wonder how much different this would go if the conversation weren't just in my head? But you look so calm asleep. So peaceful, carefree; as though all the problems you shoulder awake simply vanish when you close your eyes. Wish I had that power.

You weren't supposed to seduce me, you know. The possibility wasn't even supposed to cross your mind, it wasn't meant to be up to me to rebuff you. I wasn't armoured against the taste of your mouth, the heat of your body. The least you could have done was given me some warning--then we wouldn't be here, this would never have happened, I wouldn't be freezing my arse off in the doldrums of the night doing my damndest to talk myself out of talking myself out of disappearing into the mist. I hear the South Pacific's nice this time of year.

That didn't sound convincing even to me.

I can feel your eyes on me. Even though you're asleep, still cuddling that damn pillow, I can feel your eyes, brooding. Trying to figure me out, trying to see what makes me tick; how I'm put together; how I can live so completely in the present, act as if the past doesn't matter at all.... Christ, Mac, you should know enough about me now to figure that out. At least that. With the Horsemen, and... others, how can I not? There's too much of it; too wide too deep too plentiful. Too easy to get lost, to lose myself and then to lose my mind and then to lose my life. And I don't want to lose any of it, Mac. I never have.

That's what Byron was about, you know. Living in the present--the Now. Not that he ever did, not truly; it was always about the biggest, with him. A glutton of the future always dreaming of the next one; the next conquest, the next thrill, the next fuck. Is it any wonder he ran out of nexts? But he thought he worshipped the Now, thought he had a handle on the present, and he made it easy for me to live there. And I loved him, after all.

And living in the present--that's what keeps me sane, Mac, and it's a precarious enough balance as it is without brooding over all I can't change, everything that's in the past and has already been. Thank the gods the grunge movement never really caught on.... And it does matter, after all. The past. You can learn from it, you know. You can heed it without dwelling in it, without brooding on it. Can take it's lessons and maybe, just maybe, save not only your sanity but your soul....

Kronos, Byron, Faellon. Past immortals, past lovers. All of them nearly got me killed. All of them damn near took my head themselves, several times. They all drove me to the point where I was running far into the night for fear of losing my head and waking screaming in the dawn in fear of losing my sanity. All got themselves killed, in the end. And much as you might deny it, as hard as you work at refusing to see it, you are like them. You have that same fire, that same drive, that same conviction. That same desire to mould me to your preconceptions. And I have learnt from the past, Mac. If nothing else, I have done that.

I'd leave you a note if I could think what to write. But you don't even understand what it is I'm so afraid of, Mac; where the hell would I start? So instead I'm going to gather what traces of me are left here and slip out the door. Call me a coward if you must, if it makes you feel any better. Hell, you may even be right. Survival's an addiction though, you know? After five thousand years, I think I've forgotten how to die. And no matter how I might love you, how much I might crave your presence in my life, in my bed--I can't throw survival away that easily. Calculated risks; I can do. Spur of the moment risks; well, given my history with you I can hardly deny ever taking them, can I? With Keane and with Kristen there wasn't a risk, not really; I'm not honourable enough to ever fall to either. With the whole Horsemen mess, there wasn't exactly much of a choice. But that Dark Quickening thing--good as I am, I can't hide that one from myself. No excuses for taking those risks, no reasons beyond that you needed me, and I couldn't not come.

I can bloody well refuse to admit to it, though.

I'm running from myself as much as from you. I wonder if you'll realise that, when you wake to find your bed empty? I'm running from this desire I thought I'd had under control, right up until the moment you ignited an inferno with one sweet touch. Running from the feelings I can't hide anymore, not even from myself. Running from the things that are going to get me killed, if I let them. If I let you convince me to stay, that it'd be safe to stay.

Trust is such a twisted knife. I'll trust you to do your best to keep me safe, just like you do damn near everyone you've ever met. To keep me as happy as you know how, or at least to try, so long as I'm behaving myself of course. I'll trust you enough that I'll go to bed with you, sleep beside you afterward unarmed, believing you won't take my head. I'll trust you with my friendship. But not with my past, and not with my heart. And I can see that even after that whole Horsemen debacle, you still don't know why.

That's why.

I'll trust you with my life, but not with my survival. And risking that, day after day, year after year--it's just not in me anymore, Mac. Maybe it never was. Survival is the only constant in my world; and I cannot afford to let it go. I can't be who you need me to be, and I can't be who you see when you look at me. I'm not a saint. Not a monster. I never was either. Just somebody somewhere in between, like every person that ever walked this earth. I'm just a guy; why can't you believe me when I tell you that? Stop looking for hidden meanings, Mac; stop hunting for the secrets of five thousand years. Don't be blinded by the millenia, or see me distorted by the centuries. Take me as I am; a guy like any other. After everything, after all that's been and all that's still to come, that's what I am. All I am.

The moon highlights the hair draped across your pillows, a tangled web of memories. If I concentrate I can still feel it entwined amongst my fingers as you made love to me. See it gloriously spread out about your shoulders as you rise, lips swollen and glistening, to kiss me with the taste of my pleasure so strong in your mouth. Feel the ends of it teasing my skin, brushing across my arms as you spill your seed inside me....

I wish I could do this, Mac. I'm hard again just thinking of you, of how we spent the evening. I want this, I do; I want to go over there and wake you, lose all doubts in the solidity of your body, your presence, our need. And I wish, truly wish for the first time in well over a millennia, that I was other than what I am; that I had the strength to do it....

I can't. I'm too raw, too burnt and hurt and tired. And maybe you could do something about some of that, if I gave you the chance.... except you don't even realise that you hurt me, when Cassandra and Kronos returned and gave my nightmares life. How much you still hurt me, when you take everything I say, everything I do, and examine it under a bloody microscope looking for traces of the gods know what. Death, perhaps? Proof that that soulless creature never really died at all, is still alive, merely well hidden deep within this naive young grad student? Or proof that he isn't?

There aren't any answers, you know. There never are.

The stars are a long way off tonight, the wind blowing cold against my skin, duffel heavy against my shoulder. It's too late to get a taxi in this part of town so I guess I'll have to walk. It's fitting, anyway, that my body should be as cold, as empty, as my life has suddenly become.

I can't give it up, though. No matter how icy and vacant it gets, I can't let it go. Can't throw away the lessons of a lifetime, the habits of millennia.... The door clicks gently into place behind me, and the sound sends a flash of heat shimmering through my blood. It's not too late: I could pick the lock and be curled up beside you in a matter of heartbeats, and you need never know what almost went... and lose my head, soon or late. Lose my heart, and lose my head, and lose my life. I know the progression, have been down that street far too many times, Mac. And I don't want this to be the time I make it all the way through to the end. I'd rather be alive to miss you, than die with you in my arms.

Come on Methos, get a move on. There's a train out of town, and a ticket with your name on it. Well, a name on it. It'll do, well as any ever do. Methos is gone, vanished into the dark and deadly streets of the city. And the first passport to come to hand, well, that guy's gonna be leaving this town far behind him tonight....

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