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Odd thing that floated up, from two fandoms I don't write as often. Fragment only, and shaky
Title: Storm
Rating: PG-13
Fandoms: Highlander the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Continuity: Post-series Highlander, sometime after S4 Buffy (I think)
Characters/Pairings: Methos/Ethan Rayne
Summary: Two Initiative inmates, after they escape.
Wordcount: 1124
Warnings: Badly done, I think. *shrugs a little*
Disclaimer: Not mine
Title: Storm
Rating: PG-13
Fandoms: Highlander the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Continuity: Post-series Highlander, sometime after S4 Buffy (I think)
Characters/Pairings: Methos/Ethan Rayne
Summary: Two Initiative inmates, after they escape.
Wordcount: 1124
Warnings: Badly done, I think. *shrugs a little*
Disclaimer: Not mine
Storm
Someone, Ethan thought dazedly, someone, a very long time ago, had taken a stone jar, something smooth and opaque, pale, alabaster maybe, and siphoned the heart of a storm into its confines. Siphoned out the thrill of lightning and the weight of ozone and the whiff of terror, poured it into something thin and pale and unbreakable, and stoppered it with translucent topaz, so that you could look through gold-brown depths and see the strength of it inside. Someone, so long ago that measures had no meaning, had poured a storm into a jar, and managed to make this creature ranged above him, this man, this chaos in pale flesh.
Someone, he thought, while he was still somewhat capable, with a great deal of taste. Someone, he thought, over the rising thunder of climax, that perhaps he would like to meet.
But in the meantime ... once his thoughts came back ... oh, in a moment, darling, please ... Yes. Ah. In the meantime, darling, dear one, there was the creature himself. And more precious and pleasing a meantime he was hard-pressed to think of.
"Penny for your thoughts?" Methos murmured in his ear, a slow, dark purr, while a fine, pale fingertip traced his jawline and curled its lazy way across his cheek and over the bridge of his nose. Pausing, perhaps, to investigate his crows feet with impossible tenderness, but Ethan didn't like to think about that too much. Time ravaged him enough without devoting even more to thinking of it.
"What ... makes you think ... I'm capable of thought?" he gasped, ribs aching. Age, dear ones, age did terrible things to a body. Made the joys in life that much more difficult to come back from. And soldier-boys with their little experiments had done no favours, either. "Selling yourself a little short, aren't you?"
The Immortal laughed, soft and low, and curled narrow arms around him. Unafraid of his aging frame, not disgusted by the thick ropes of scars that marked his time among America's finest. Ethan didn't like to be as grateful for that as he was, but it was early days yet. He was allowed to take the pleasures of freedom as they came. And this, right here, this was certainly a pleasure. Not exactly what he'd expected from a fellow inmate of that so sterile hell, but then, he rather thought few got exactly what they expected from this, of all creatures.
"Always thinking, Ethan," Methos murmured softly, lean and spare and volatile against him. Lightning in a jar. Chaos given form. "Always feeling. Always alive. Is it the price? I can pay more than a penny. In any currency you care to name. Could even rustle up some gold, at a push. Or spice. Or silk."
"Or a harem, while you're at it?" Ethan grumbled softly, but curled closer regardless, smiling into the hard line of Methos' shoulder.
"Let's start slow on that one," the man chuckled, resting the pale spread of his hand over Ethan's chest, measuring the still-frantic patter of breath. "Wait until you're up to it."
"Oi!" he growled, rolling over on top of the other man, using the weight of his sturdier frame to his advantage and glaring down into the grin. "Just because some of us don't have their own little reset button, doesn't mean we can't ... rise to the occasion, as required." He smiled his filthiest smile. "Some of us have never had trouble in that particular regard." And, alright, maybe that wasn't as true as it used to be, and maybe spending a while under Initiative care had given his libido something of a hit, but there was no call to be questioning his prowess after the morning's events ...
"I know," Methos said, quietly, and Ethan had the strangest impression he was answering the thoughts and not the words, but since to his knowledge the Immortal package did not come with telepathy, he let it go. Besides. That soft, knowing smile did things to him, things he'd thought he'd left behind a long time ago, with a savage, brash young man, and the thrill of magic with someone by his side. Something that wormed through his chest and made breathing a problem all over again, so he did his best to shove it away, and focus on something more important. Like breakfast.
"You could make it up to me?" he asked, grinning cheerfully. "With breakfast, for example?" Slightly more serious, there. Slightly more hopeful. Real food was a treasure, after the Initiative. Real food was a joy right up there with Methos' mouth, and a morning in bed. Somewhere below other things, but ...
Never mind. Never mind. And Methos frowned at him, that lazy, careful consideration, but the Immortal said nothing, and only smiled. And then grinned, wide and cheerful as the Cheshire Cat, and Ethan felt himself leaning into it all over again. Felt himself leaning into the storm inside Methos' opaque, unbreakable jar.
"I can do breakfast," the Immortal purred against him, surging up and breaking around him in a spill of pale, powerful limbs, catching Ethan and rolling him back over, cradling him beneath the storm with almost terrible gentleness. Chaos, given flesh, and oh, how so many sometimes forgot, that Chaos could be gentle too, the welling uprush through Order's cracks something to be savoured and tasted and sung. Something so many looked away from, but not him. Never him. Ethan had always known the gentler side of Chaos, and the darker, and the sweeter, and all the facets that people never looked to see.
And here, in his arms, holding tight above him, all of that, in muscle and bone and bright, topaz eyes that watched him lazily with all the patience of the universe. He looked up into it, into the maw of the storm, and felt himself shatter, felt himself fall, as he'd always known he would, as he'd always felt was coming.
"Ethan?" Methos asked, with the buzz of lightning under the words, and the sharp-smell of ozone from his skin. "What did you want for breakfast?" And Ethan laughed, soft and ruined and maybe, possibly, just a little, happy.
"Chaos," he said softly, mapping the edges of their world in his magic, touching as deep as possible into the well of the storm, and laughing. "You."
"Ah," said Methos, the storm in a jar, that aeons ago some clever someone had caught and formed, raw from the firmament, and one of these days, when Chaos swallowed him whole and tossed him up at the end of the stream, Ethan was going to meet that someone, and compliment them on their astounding taste. "That," said the Immortal, "we can do."
Such little things, the joys of life. For tasting when they fall.
Someone, Ethan thought dazedly, someone, a very long time ago, had taken a stone jar, something smooth and opaque, pale, alabaster maybe, and siphoned the heart of a storm into its confines. Siphoned out the thrill of lightning and the weight of ozone and the whiff of terror, poured it into something thin and pale and unbreakable, and stoppered it with translucent topaz, so that you could look through gold-brown depths and see the strength of it inside. Someone, so long ago that measures had no meaning, had poured a storm into a jar, and managed to make this creature ranged above him, this man, this chaos in pale flesh.
Someone, he thought, while he was still somewhat capable, with a great deal of taste. Someone, he thought, over the rising thunder of climax, that perhaps he would like to meet.
But in the meantime ... once his thoughts came back ... oh, in a moment, darling, please ... Yes. Ah. In the meantime, darling, dear one, there was the creature himself. And more precious and pleasing a meantime he was hard-pressed to think of.
"Penny for your thoughts?" Methos murmured in his ear, a slow, dark purr, while a fine, pale fingertip traced his jawline and curled its lazy way across his cheek and over the bridge of his nose. Pausing, perhaps, to investigate his crows feet with impossible tenderness, but Ethan didn't like to think about that too much. Time ravaged him enough without devoting even more to thinking of it.
"What ... makes you think ... I'm capable of thought?" he gasped, ribs aching. Age, dear ones, age did terrible things to a body. Made the joys in life that much more difficult to come back from. And soldier-boys with their little experiments had done no favours, either. "Selling yourself a little short, aren't you?"
The Immortal laughed, soft and low, and curled narrow arms around him. Unafraid of his aging frame, not disgusted by the thick ropes of scars that marked his time among America's finest. Ethan didn't like to be as grateful for that as he was, but it was early days yet. He was allowed to take the pleasures of freedom as they came. And this, right here, this was certainly a pleasure. Not exactly what he'd expected from a fellow inmate of that so sterile hell, but then, he rather thought few got exactly what they expected from this, of all creatures.
"Always thinking, Ethan," Methos murmured softly, lean and spare and volatile against him. Lightning in a jar. Chaos given form. "Always feeling. Always alive. Is it the price? I can pay more than a penny. In any currency you care to name. Could even rustle up some gold, at a push. Or spice. Or silk."
"Or a harem, while you're at it?" Ethan grumbled softly, but curled closer regardless, smiling into the hard line of Methos' shoulder.
"Let's start slow on that one," the man chuckled, resting the pale spread of his hand over Ethan's chest, measuring the still-frantic patter of breath. "Wait until you're up to it."
"Oi!" he growled, rolling over on top of the other man, using the weight of his sturdier frame to his advantage and glaring down into the grin. "Just because some of us don't have their own little reset button, doesn't mean we can't ... rise to the occasion, as required." He smiled his filthiest smile. "Some of us have never had trouble in that particular regard." And, alright, maybe that wasn't as true as it used to be, and maybe spending a while under Initiative care had given his libido something of a hit, but there was no call to be questioning his prowess after the morning's events ...
"I know," Methos said, quietly, and Ethan had the strangest impression he was answering the thoughts and not the words, but since to his knowledge the Immortal package did not come with telepathy, he let it go. Besides. That soft, knowing smile did things to him, things he'd thought he'd left behind a long time ago, with a savage, brash young man, and the thrill of magic with someone by his side. Something that wormed through his chest and made breathing a problem all over again, so he did his best to shove it away, and focus on something more important. Like breakfast.
"You could make it up to me?" he asked, grinning cheerfully. "With breakfast, for example?" Slightly more serious, there. Slightly more hopeful. Real food was a treasure, after the Initiative. Real food was a joy right up there with Methos' mouth, and a morning in bed. Somewhere below other things, but ...
Never mind. Never mind. And Methos frowned at him, that lazy, careful consideration, but the Immortal said nothing, and only smiled. And then grinned, wide and cheerful as the Cheshire Cat, and Ethan felt himself leaning into it all over again. Felt himself leaning into the storm inside Methos' opaque, unbreakable jar.
"I can do breakfast," the Immortal purred against him, surging up and breaking around him in a spill of pale, powerful limbs, catching Ethan and rolling him back over, cradling him beneath the storm with almost terrible gentleness. Chaos, given flesh, and oh, how so many sometimes forgot, that Chaos could be gentle too, the welling uprush through Order's cracks something to be savoured and tasted and sung. Something so many looked away from, but not him. Never him. Ethan had always known the gentler side of Chaos, and the darker, and the sweeter, and all the facets that people never looked to see.
And here, in his arms, holding tight above him, all of that, in muscle and bone and bright, topaz eyes that watched him lazily with all the patience of the universe. He looked up into it, into the maw of the storm, and felt himself shatter, felt himself fall, as he'd always known he would, as he'd always felt was coming.
"Ethan?" Methos asked, with the buzz of lightning under the words, and the sharp-smell of ozone from his skin. "What did you want for breakfast?" And Ethan laughed, soft and ruined and maybe, possibly, just a little, happy.
"Chaos," he said softly, mapping the edges of their world in his magic, touching as deep as possible into the well of the storm, and laughing. "You."
"Ah," said Methos, the storm in a jar, that aeons ago some clever someone had caught and formed, raw from the firmament, and one of these days, when Chaos swallowed him whole and tossed him up at the end of the stream, Ethan was going to meet that someone, and compliment them on their astounding taste. "That," said the Immortal, "we can do."
Such little things, the joys of life. For tasting when they fall.