Work Text:
(45) - (Mac/Methos)
"Winnipeg." Methos grinned and squinted up at the sun. "I can't believe it."
"Yeah," Mac muttered darkly. "So I've heard. About fifty-seven times."
"Sorry." Methos didn't sound sorry at all. "But who would've thought? Winnipeg."
Mac sat on a rock, elbows on his knees, sword dangling idly from his hands. He'd been listening to Methos marvel over the locale for what felt like decades. It wasn't like Mac had bought a travel guide and picked the place for its cultural value. It wasn't like he'd said to himself, Time for the Gathering, MacLeod, let's have it somewhere that will really piss Methos off.
Nothing could make a guy long for the end of the world like having Methos around for the last five minutes of it.
Methos turned in a slow circle, awestruck. "Winnipeg!"
"Oh, dear." Mac dropped the sword and hung his head.
"Think of the copy. 'Lo, and at the end of days, the last living Immortals were drawn by unfathomable powers to their sacred last battle -- behind a burned-out shack two miles north of the fabled city of Winnipeg!'"
"Well," Mac sighed. "When you put it like that."
"Our origins are lost in the mists of time, but our final seconds tick away within shouting distance of a donut shop and a 7-11." Methos laughed delightedly. "Irony like that is proof of a Higher Power."
"I won't fight back, I swear. The Prize is all yours, just cut clean."
"Duncan." Methos knelt in front of him and picked up Mac's fallen sword. "That wasn't the plan, and you know it."
"It was a stupid plan."
"It was your idea!"
"I know," Mac said fervently. "But now that we're down to it, I'm terrified we'll screw it up and end up lying side by side, half-decapitated, for all eternity--and you'll never shut up."
"Oh? Better that one of us should survive to rule the world with a benevolent iron fist? You with your pathetic devotion to opera and blood sports, or me with my insidious charm and complete aversion to sobriety? History won't thank either of us for surviving the other; we might as well get on with it."
Mac stood up so fast his legs tangled. "You mean it?"
"Well." Methos smiled dangerously. "There's a new plan."
"A guillotine, maybe. Very sharp blade. Make it quick for myself."
Methos lifted Mac's chin with gentle fingers and kissed him.
With five thousand years of dedicated practice behind it.
When Mac regained consciousness, he was horizontal--grass below, Methos above.
"Pay attention," Methos said. "There can be only one. Now, literally, we couldn't both survive that kind of mandatory term limit. It's just not in the math. Figuratively, however--assuming we do it right--there could be a moment when we're close enough to be...well...One." He blushed. "If we were to subscribe to a rather Harliquinesque view of the act in question, which, being a big strong manly Scot, I'm sure you don't."
"Methos." Mac groaned. "Kill me or fuck me. I don't care which. Just don't talk while you're doing it."
"You think it will work?" Methos frowned, suddenly pensive. "What if it doesn--mmph!"
Hours later, when the sun had sunk beneath the horizon and the last evening had darkened into the last night of the last day before the End, two long, lean survivors curled close to one another in the dew-drenched grass, panting and spent and happy.
Until one of them said in a bright, wondering tone: "Winnipeg!"
And the other reached behind him for his sword --