All standard disclaimers apply. Methos, Joe, Amanda and the Watchers (and the locations around Seacouver) are the property of Rysher, Inc., and I am only borrowing them for a little fun (and for no other profit) and returning them in good condition. Milia, Millie, Emmy and Sharlie are mine. Please do not reprint or publish this story without contacting me first. All comments may be sent to me at kit@hers.com.

This story takes place some time after Thanksgiving.For those of you who haven't read Thanksgiving, or Love on the Line, its predecessor, Mariellen and Millie are twin Immortals. Mariellen's cover for her Immortality is her job as a Watcher, similar to Adam's cover. Her Immortal name is Milia of DunLaoghaire.

The Trouble with Older Women....

by Kit Mason

©1996, Karen-Marie Mason

"'You know so much for such a young man,'" Methos fumed. He kicked through the wet leaves on the sidewalk, ignoring the constant drizzle that dampened his clothes and hair. "Young man. I haven't been a young man for five thousand years, and this woman makes me feel like I should be back in grammar school. It's as bad as 'when I was your age.'"

Why did Millie seem to dwell so much on age? Maybe she didn't; maybe he was just sensitive to it. What did it really matter? All of them were older than anyone had a right to expect, except Richie, and he had the potential and energy to live as long as he wanted. What did it matter that he was five thousand years old and she was ten thousand? They were certainly closer to each other in age and cultural background than they were to mortals in the present society.

Methos liked some things about modern life very well -- indoor plumbing, hot baths, good food, rock music. He didn't want to be reminded every third minute that he'd ridden donkeys for two millenia instead of driving a Volvo, or that he'd once walked from the Balkans to Siberia on a bet, looking for the Reindeer Goddess, or that he didn't know much about the cultures that came before his own, whichever one that was. He couldn't really remember it that well, most of the time. Details, yes; he could still taste the slice of wild ox roasted over an open flame as he traveled in the baggage train of Alexander of Macedon, or the nutty flavor of hearth-baked loaves that he could recall back before his first death. Other than the faces of individuals, though, he recalled only a little of the first culture he'd lived within, the tribe that had found him as a baby and raised him to adulthood.

He realized after fifteen minutes of pacing the wet streets that he was shivering, and looked for the nearest reasonable shelter. Reasonable or not, Joe's club was around the corner. He checked his watch; 11:30 a.m. Good, the club had just opened for lunch. He headed there as quickly as he could manage without breaking into a full run.

"Whoa," Joe Dawson said, as Methos burst in through the door. "What's up? Is someone following you? You're soaked."

"No, I was out walking for my health," Methos snapped.

"I see." Joe tossed him a bar towel. "Hang your coat over by the radiator and pull up a seat. The soup today is lentil with shrimp, and the sandwich special is smoked turkey and swiss cheese on rye. Interested?"

"Why lentil with shrimp?" Methos unwound his scarf from around his neck and wrung it out before hanging it up. He rubbed the bar towel through his hair, and pushed the odd wisps back down before he dropped the towel over the radiator. "That seems an odd combination."

"I wanted to make gumbo, and we were out of file powder, so I had to improvise." Joe's eyebrows rose. Was it his imagination, or did Methos's replies have a sharper edge than usual?

Methos took off his coat, which weighed more wet than he realized until he was free of it. He spread it over two chairs near the radiator to dry.

"Why are you doing the cooking? I thought Terry took care of that."

"He's home with the flu. There's not much business for Saturday lunch, so I decided to hold the place down myself until Sharlie gets here at one." He settled himself on the stool he kept behind the bar, and watched Methos casually, as if it were an everyday thing for the oldest man he knew to stamp into the club like a frustrated teenager.

Methos sniffled. If he weren't Immortal he'd be in danger of pneumonia or at least a two-week head cold. "How about the soup and a sandwich?" The sneeze caught him unaware. When he recovered, after three more sneezes, he added, "I didn't get any breakfast."

"Okay." The phone rang under the bar. Joe leaned over to pick up the receiver, listened and told the caller, "Just a moment." To Methos he said, "Could I ask you to serve yourself? You know where everything is."

"No problem." At least he hadn't had to cook it. He hadn't wanted to stay in the house with that -- that -- 'older woman' -- for a moment longer. Irritating, bossy, know-it-all -- and the worst thing was, she was right most of the time. It was almost as bad as dealing with that boy scout, MacLeod, when he got onto one of his kicks about honor and chivalry.

When he came back with his food, he set it on the bar and pulled up a barstool to sit on. Joe hung up the phone and started to stack glasses behind the bar; when that was done, he sliced lemons and limes and checked on the supply of sodas and mixers, then tested the taps to make sure all of them were working.

All this time, Methos ate his lunch, quietly.

"You're pretty quiet today. Something wrong?" Joe raised an interested eyebrow in his direction. Methos shrugged. "Anything you want to talk about?"

"Only over a beer." He pointed to one of the taps and Joe pulled him a mug with just the right amount of head. "Thanks. Ah, this tastes good. So does the soup -- I think I might hide the gumbo file the next time I come in to work and see what else you come up with."

"You didn't come here to talk about the soup, did you?" Joe pulled up the stool he kept for himself behind the bar. "Is it Watcher business?"

Methos shook his head. "No. Just woman trouble." He stirred the soup with his spoon for a moment, chasing a shrimp, trying to find the right words. "Joe, does it ever bother you that Milia is so much older than you are?"

"Actually, I kind of like it. It lets me learn a few things," Joe said. His smile wavered between shy and happy. "I like not always having to be the strong one in the relationship who has all the answers. That can get very tiring."

"Yeah, tell me about it. But -- if I'm not intruding here -- is she always right about things? Does she always know the answer, and it's something you never heard of? Doesn't it bother you when she knows more than you do about everything?"

Joe shook his head. "Hell, no. Are you kidding? If I'm going out with an older woman, I want her to know more than I do. Otherwise, what's the point? Mariellen's not always right, and she doesn't tell me how to run things." He leaned forward on the bar, confidingly. "When she turns into Milia of DunLaoghaire, though, I just get out of the way and enjoy the action. I know when I'm out of my league."

Methos stared at his beer, picked it up and drank nearly half of it in a gulp. "Maybe I should just do that, get out of the way for a while. This thing with Millie is starting to bother me." He finished it with a second gulp and held out the mug for a refill.

"I think you're not used to dealing with anyone who's older than you are or who has more experience in any area," Joe said as he topped off the second draught. "When's the last time you fell in love with an older woman?"

Methos stared up at the decoration over the rows of bottles and thought in a distracted way that it needed cleaning. Sharlie would probably ask him to do it the next time he worked at the bar; he was the tallest of any of Joe's employees.

Older woman? When had he met Ashaia, on the banks of the Ganges? Ashaia, with her long dark hair and gleaming smile, who taught him yoga before anyone called it that?

"I think sometime in about 2000 BC. She wasn't one of my wives, she was someone I met on a trading venture when I was in India. She claimed to be about four thousand years old then, and I wasn't about to argue. But she was different; the women in India have always been different."

"Probably not as assertive, or as authoritative."

"Definitely not as authoritative." He ran his fingers through his damp hair. "Gods, I feel as if I was back in the military again with Julius Caesar."

"Oh, come on, it can't be that bad, can it?"

"Well, not all the time," Methos admitted. He pushed the empty plate and bowl away, and drew random patterns on the bar with his fingertip, concentrating as if an answer would suddenly blaze into light in front of him.

The Trouble With Older Women..., by Kit Mason, part 2

Joe picked up his own sandwich and took a few bites. He turned the coffeepot on and set up the cream and sugar.

"Times change, and people change to fit them. I shouldn't have to tell you that. How long has it been since the last time you were married? Or since the last time you fell in love and didn't get married?"

Methos's shoulder twitched with irritation. "The last time I fell in love and didn't get married, I had to go away for a business trip and got caught in someone else's war. First I was thrown into prison for crossing the border in the wrong place, then the only way I could get out was to be on the wrong side of the army. It took years to get back, and when I did it was the week after my lady Amanda had just met this large Scotsman." Joe had been pouring himself a glass of soda; it spilled onto the workspace behind the bar as he looked up, startled. Methos went on, "I could see the writing on the wall; I was tired that decade, anyway, and he just had so damn much energy."

Joe grunted in agreement. "Yeah, tell me about it. You try to follow him through Scotland when he doesn't want the company." He mopped up the spill, trying to imagine what the world had been like when beautiful Amanda and a very young Duncan MacLeod had fallen in love the first time.

He'd seen the scars of Duncan's first love, Deborah, still burning on the Scotsman's psyche when Duncan had gone home to return the bracelet he'd given his first love to the grave where he'd buried her. Methos didn't seem to carry the same kind of scars from his affair with Amanda, but then he was a master at hiding everything about himself except that seemingly innocent grad-student appearance.

"I wouldn't dream of it." Methos paused. "Let's see. The last time I was really married -- that would be during the Elizabethan era, when I was selling food at the Globe Theatre. She was a seamstress who made costumes for the actors. Unfortunately, she decided that the actors were more fun than I was, and ran off with the pretty lead actor that season. It made me careless, and I got killed soon afterward in a tavern brawl with a friend, Kit Marlowe, who was arguing about the bill."

Joe looked up, intrigued. "You were there when Christopher Marlowe was killed? The historians are still trying to figure out what happened."

"Well, don't ask me. I was out cold on the floor most of the time, and when I came to I was in the middle of a full-scale donnybrook. We both ended up with swords in our guts. I was just lucky that the Watch was coming down the street; the barmen tossed my body out the back door into the alley, and I could get away easily enough when I woke up."

"It figures." Joe tossed the bar towel into the laundry bin with a flourish.

"Oh, come on, Joe, give me a break. I'm just a guy."

"You keep saying that, but I still don't believe you. Your average guy doesn't have five thousand years of experience behind him."

"My experience tells me I'd like some of whatever dessert you're hiding in the kitchen. What's up today?"

"Not much. I've got some coffeecake from the Watchers meeting this morning if you want some."

Methos struck the bar with his hand. "Damn! Did I miss another meeting? Did anyone notice?"

"Calm down, it was a supervisors' meeting, and you weren't invited anyway. Nothing major, just the monthly paperwork."

"Well, that's good. I couldn't deal with a meeting this morning. Coffeecake, you said? Where is it? I'll get myself some."

"In the case by the counter, second shelf."

Methos slipped off his stool, picked up his dishes and wandered into the kitchen, emerging a few minutes later with a slice of cake on a plate and a fork. "Would you pour me some coffee, please? Coffeecake with beer doesn't taste right."

The coffee was brewed; Joe poured him a cup and pushed the cream and sugar down the counter toward him. "Do you want to talk about this morning?"

"No." Methos took a bite of cake and washed it down with black coffee. "I'm just tired of finding out that whatever I come up with, she's been there, done that, and gotten the T-shirt already. When I want to discuss something Plato said in one of his lectures, she was there in the audience, dressed as a man and sitting with her friend, Axiothia."

"Axiothia? Should I know that name?"

Methos sipped his coffee and put the cup down. "The only woman Plato allowed to attend his Academy, because he said she had a 'male soul', whatever that meant. Considering some of that crowd, she would have been safer dressing as a girl, but then they wouldn't have let her in."

"Were you there?"

"Oh, no. I was Spartan in those days; uncomfortable lifestyle, never enough food. They wouldn't have let me in either." He shuddered and too another bite of cake, which was surprisingly tasty. "What else? When I think about cooking up some obscure Mongolian barbecue recipe to surprise her, she not only knows the recipe but mixes the spices better than I can."

Joe finished his soda and went to the kitchen. He came back with a slice of coffeecake for himself, which he set on the bar. He poured himself a cup of coffee, doctored it with cream and sugar, refilled Methos's cup, and settled back on his barstool.

"Maybe you should try to live more in the present, if all your problems come from things in the past. If it's not too personal to ask, what do you do together for fun?"

"We go to adventure movies, so she can figure out how the stunts were done. Or we go to concerts or plays with Duncan and Amanda, or ... oh, I don't know. I'm out of practice at this sort of thing, Joe. Maybe I'm just not good at it any more. Maybe I should go back to Paris and stay in the basement of Shakespeare and Company for a decade or two, writing the Methos chronicles."

"Don't you think she'd be pretty upset if you just left? Mariellen tells me Millie is happier with you than she's been in years."

"And how many years is that? For sisters, they don't get together very often, you know, once every couple of centuries or so."

"Maybe she's a little out of practice at this relationship thing too, did you think of that?" Joe hesitated, then said what he was thinking. "I don't want to dig up the past, but you know you really did have it very easy with Alexa in some ways."

"What do you mean -- easy? We had a year, and then she died." And then he got drunk every day for a month, by himself, until he could stand to wake up in the morning and know he wouldn't see her face.

"Yes, easy. You had a year in which you were the most important person in her life -- almost the only person in her life -- and she loved you completely. It's hard sharing someone you love with her relatives and friends, even in the present time. When those relatives and friends -- and the memories of the past -- go back way before your time together, it can be really rough."

Methos finished his coffee and stared at the bottom of the empty cup. When he looked up, he said, "You think that's it? You think I'm trying to compete with the past?"

"It's possible." Joe shrugged. "There's definitely enough to compete with, and not all of hers can be good any more than yours was. Don't you think sometimes that she wonders if she measures up to your memories of your past wives, however many there were?"

"Sixty-seven. No, sixty-eight. Maybe. Do you ever worry about measuring up to Milia's past husbands?"

"Sometimes. She says she has no complaints, so I believe her. But it's not something you forget, you know. You just learn to live with it, because you know if you're making her happy you must be doing something right." Joe cleared his throat. "You know, Alexa and Millie aren't very much alike. Alexa was an independent woman when she was well, but toward the end she had to depend on you completely. I don't think Millie's ever had to depend on anyone like that."

Methos absorbed this in silence while he finished his cake. "You might have something there. When I think about Alexa, I remember us being together so much. Sometimes I hardly see Millie for a week at a time, when she's filming or preparing stunts for that TV adventure show she's working on." Joe noticed his face brightening as he talked about her. "She's really good at being a stuntwoman, you know. She's gotten me a pass to be on the set a couple of times, so I can see what she does. It almost has me scared, seeing her taking some of those risks. If she gets killed in public, she won't have anywhere to go for a decade, so many people have seen her." He shuddered. "I watch her do car crashes and jump from high windows into those big breakfall mattresses, and that's fine. When she's a double for someone in a swordfighting scene I'm terrified that she'll lose her head. But she's so calm, so capable." He pushed his cup toward Joe for another refill. "I don't want her to be less than she is, but I'd like to think that she'd miss me if I weren't around."

"Don't you think she needs you too?" For himself, Joe knew he needed Mariellen, his Emmy who held him close and loved him, the quiet Watcher who in passion became Milia the Immortal. He needed her as much as he needed his blues guitar, as much as he needed to breathe. The older he got, the deeper the emotions ran, but he was only in his early 50s. How deep must they run for someone a hundred times that age?

Methos shook his head slowly. "Joe, I just wish I knew that I mattered to her. What could she need me for? Anything I can do, she can do better. It's like being married to Wonder Woman. And then there's Amanda on the sidelines." He shook his head at Joe's expression. "No, not like that. Amanda's a wonderful woman to have as a friend, but Duncan's welcome to her. It's just that she's always around. They're always talking, and changing the subject when I walk into the room."

"Women do that. Men do that too." Joe raised an eyebrow at his friend. "Either they'll talk about you, or they won't; whichever, you can't do anything about it."

"I know that," Methos snapped. "It just gets to be too much sometimes."

"Even so, with all this stuff that bothers you -- do you love her?"

The question hung in the air, unanswered, for a long moment. Methos looked over at Joe. "The gods help me, I do," he said quietly.

The door swung open, letting in a gust of wind, a burst of rain, and a very wet Millie. Water streamed from her long hair and down her sweater and jeans. She shivered as she came toward Methos, trailing water across the floor, her face wet with tears as well as rain.

"Adam, I'm so sorry," she said. Her teeth were chattering. "I didn't mean to break your antique waffle iron. Will you forgive me?" She looked like a fifteen-year-old who'd been caught breaking curfew, not like the tough and jaunty pirate queen of the Caribbean. "I never made waffles before. How was I supposed to know that it didn't latch on both sides?"

Methos's words caught in his throat. He got up, walked over to her and wrapped his arms around her, ignoring the water that dripped on him. "I'm sorry too, Mil. I've been getting spiny about things that don't deserve it. Do you think you can still put up with me?"

She hugged him back, nestling her wet head on his wool sweater, and nodded. "The house is too quiet without you. Please come back, you can play the Rolling Rocks all the time if you want." Her aquamarine eyes were starry with tears. "Besides, who else in the world would read me Persian love poems in Persian, or Babylonian adventure stories in Babylonian -- and with the right accent, too?"

Joe tossed Methos a towel from behind the bar. "I think you might want this," he said. "Don't worry about the floor; it'll get washed later anyway. I need to check on the soup." He went to the kitchen, careful not to listen to the murmurred conversation behind him. When he came back out, five minutes later, the room was empty except for a puddle on the floor. Methos's coat and scarf were gone. A small pile of money sat on the bar next to the empty dishes and two wet towels.

Joe sighed. He sat down behind the bar and punched in a number on the phone. When it was picked up, he said, "Emmy, love, it's all right. They've just left. Whatever you said to Millie must have worked. No, I didn't tell him you'd called. I love you, too. I'll see you later."

He hung up the phone and shook his head. "I'm too old to play marriage counselor," he told himself, but cleared the rest of Methos's dishes away anyhow so they wouldn't cause any comment when Sharlie came to work in a few minutes.

finis

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