Chapter Text
Los Angeles, CA — 2011
It was not unusual for Methos to see mortals who remind him of others long-dead, even mortals who resembled those he remembered so closely as to be practically indistinguishable. Most of the time, it was merely disconcerting. Most of the time. Then, of course, there were times like this, when there was a total stranger looking out of a face he'd loved beyond distraction, and the pain was almost worse than the pain of not looking at all. Adam Lambert was not Daronwy -- they never were, these dopplegangers from his past -- but he moved with the same deep joy, and the voice that poured from his throat had the same pure clarity, and though Adam's lacked the training that had made Daronwy a Bard, in another age he would have received it and excelled, even as he was excelling with the different demands of the modern world.
There was a bittersweet joy to watching him, unrestrained and unabashedly himself, expanding like a flower basking in the sunshine of the love of the audience, fearless and brilliant in a way that the times had kept Daronwy from achieving — though he'd been fearless and brilliant in his own way — and the pain of his loss still ached in Methos’ heart, especially in midwinter.
Methos stayed for the whole show, rapt and unmoving, watching Adam-not-Daronwy with an tightness in his breast that was more sweet than bitter, and when Adam made his final triumphant bow after singing a song that Daronwy himself could have sung, their eyes met. It was an accident, it must have been, but for just an instant he paused, expression oddly frozen, and Methos could not move as something heart-piercing flashed between them. Then Adam straightened again, and Methos had to close his eyes against the stupid, ridiculous hope that threatened for an agonizing moment. When he opened them, Adam was walking off stage, so he turned and started slowly threading his way through the crowd.
Adam had sung ‘Starlight’ as the second encore. Originally there hadn’t been room in the setlist for one encore, let alone two, but Scarlett and Lee had seen just as well as he had the energy of the crowd and the unfinishedness of it. There needed to be an encore, and when Monte suggested ‘Let’s Dance’ from the Idol Bowie medley, and Scarlett had caught Tommy’s arm and spun him around before sending him practically skipping back on stage, Adam knew how he would finish it. The Bowie was raucous, the whole audience dancing, and then he pulled it all in, all the energy pouring toward him, and sent it back out to the people there with him and in front of him, to the people no doubt watching and listening from far away, the people this performance was raising money for — so much need after the earthquake, the flooding, how could he not help how he could? — the universe itself. He sang the Muse song acoustic, nearly a cappella, Monte accompanying with spare and haunting guitar. The audience listened, rapt and hardly breathing. It was the best and most amazing kind of moment, everyone caught up in the feeling, the energy, the Song.
When the last note (a high one, pure and heart-piercing as the light of a distant star) shimmered into nothing there was a moment of breath-caught silence, swiftly followed with thunderous applause, loud with wonder and delight. Looking out at the audience, the upturned faces in the first rows glittering in the light from the stage, Adam saw new faces and old, people he recognized from other concerts, friends and lovers and strangers, all united in happiness, holding onto the moment. One in particular caught Adam’s attention, a man with a short crop of dark hair, a blade of a nose in a sharp-boned face, and eyes as deep and bright with yearning as the starlight he had just sung.
When their eyes met, Adam knew there was something inexplicably important about him. Something he knew-needed-recognized in that stark, flash-photo moment. Not someone he had ever seen before, and yet Adam knew him. Thought spinning as he bowed and waved and finally nearly skipped off the stage, Adam caught Lane in the wings, even before joining in the after-show free-for-all of hugs. Breathless, he asked, “Lane -- the tall guy, second row center, dark hair, with the nose?”
She was nodding, “Tall, dark and captivated, the tiniest bit out of place in the midst of the front-row regulars, yes?”
“Yes, exactly!” (Heavens he loved her, was glad he had her: the job would be very much harder without her) “Can you try to find him, catch him before he leaves, bring him to the dressing room?” Lane was getting that ‘are you sure about this’ look in her eyes. Adam couldn’t even say himself why it mattered, but it did. “I, it matters. I don’t know why, but it does. Please?” Lane angled an eyebrow at him as Sutan came up from behind and tugged at the tails of his coat preparatory to pulling him away to the dressing room. “Please?” Adam said again.
Lane nodded, “I’ll see what I can do.” Then Adam was saying thank you to her ponytail as she was slipping through the purposeful chaos of the wings toward the door that lead to the front of the house. On a mission.
Methos was tempted by the crowd threading their way towards what he had to assume was a meet-and-greet of some type, but he couldn't bear to stand in a crowd of overly-excited men and women about to meet a celebrity when he was remembering a man, flesh and blood and so deeply loved as to cause his heart to ache in memory more than two thousand years later. Having a stranger look at him from Daronwy's eyes was more than even he was willing to torture himself with, especially after that moment earlier.
"Excuse me." A woman's voice, British accented. Methos pulled Benjamin Dawson back over himself like a shield as he turned around.
"Yes?" She was blonde and beautiful, though self-effacing in a way that came from years of being around people the public considered more interesting. Methos' chest tightened painfully yet again.
"Adam would like to see you, backstage." She seemed slightly puzzled, and Methos didn't blame her. He closed his eyes for a brief moment, then nodded, not trusting his voice, before following her back through the crowd and into the maze of backstage.
She knocked gently on the door, and at the muffled 'come in' from inside, opened it. "Well? Go on in."
Methos swallowed hard and did as he was instructed. The door closed behind him, and for a moment he was looking at Daronwy again, two thousand years lifting like a veil from between them.
/Adam/, he reminded himself. /Daronwy is dead and gone, and you should leave, and stop torturing yourself./ But he couldn't, not when Adam was looking at him like that, faintly puzzled.
Adam, not at all sure why he was doing this, but Quite Certain it was the right thing to do, let Sutan help him out of his stage clothes — he’d brought out the Idol Tour jacket, and wasn’t that appropriate — then shooed him away as he got into t-shirt & jeans. Still in that after-performance headspace that sharpened everything, Adam kept coming back to the man in the audience, that moment. Remembering to breathe, waiting, until he heard Lane’s knock at the door. And then there he was. Eyes out of a dream, an energy. The usual performance-arousal gained an extra layer, fizzed with the same solid familiarity/always new sense that Brad could still inspire. Adam opened his mouth without the faintest idea of what he was going to say.
"I know you," Adam said. It wasn't a question, though it ought to have been. "You like books and beer and horses, and there's a spot right here --" he reached out one finger to touch just below the corner of that sharp jaw, and the man took a shuddering breath -- "that's more sensitive than you wanted even me to know. And I don't know your name. Or how I know that."
Methos took one half-step towards him, unable to stop himself, and Daronwy -- Adam -- curled his hand around the back of Methos' neck, stroked a thumb over the tendon there. It was an utterly familiar gesture, one of Daronwy's, and two thousand years later it still sent desire rushing bright and hungry through Methos' veins. He caught Adam's wrist, but couldn't think of anything to do with it beyond hold it, feeling Adam alive and vital beneath his curled fingers.
"It's not possible," he whispered, even while he wanted it to be possible, more than he'd wanted anything since he'd wanted Alexa to live. "You can't --"
Despite the familiar mundanity of the dressing room — or perhaps it was with the assistance of the familiar magic of the theatre, where things became real because they were made to look and sound and seem real — Adam felt as though the world had come unanchored from space and time. He knew this man, his body, the wry turn of his mouth, the texture of his hair, the tenor of his voice. Adam’s wrist -- the Eye of Horus and the infinity-shape, not finished, a work in progress (and for a flash he can see what the whole sleeve might be, with spirals and dots and other shapes that mean things he can’t quite catch) — recognizes the touch of his fingers, light on the pulse. Adam had never entirely bought the idea of past lives — certainly not enough to forgo the least bit of enjoying this one — but in this moment it seemed much the most likely possibility.
“Know you? Know those things?” Not moving, not wanting to come closer/touch more/pull the man into the enveloping embrace he really really wanted to without more from this man he knew and did not know at all. God. Adam knew the soft, shattered sound he made, coming, but not his name — true-name, use-name, stage-name, anything — or what he did for a living or the love of it, didn’t know what he liked on his pizza — if he even liked pizza — chased with that foamy, gold beer. “But I do. Know them. I don’t know how, but I do.” Adam pulled all the energy, the effervescence still running through him and asked, everything focused in eye and breath, because this mattered, “Who are you, that you look at me like I’m a ghost, or your heart’s desire, or an enormous threat? I’m not a threat, really.”
"Methos." His name was a prayer, a wish, not to himself, but for himself, that somehow it would stir something in this man in front of him, would pull something from him that was more than a cruel joke, the gods holding something he'd wanted too badly even to hope for in front of him before snatching it away from him again.
Adam mouthed the name, an old name, an ancient name, bells and cymbals and faraway lurs, echoing from Middle Earth and Narnia and the spaces the music came from on the best days. True name. Infinitely precious. Adam turned his wrist to catch Methos’ (true-name, deep-name, but not what he goes by, what he went by) hand in turn, feeling the race of his pulse. Megan had seen ghosts in the Idol Mansion, and Adam had always known there were doorways and spaces and things outside what was called normal perception. What was a stage but another world, a character but another life, however fleeting? “Snow. Lightning. Starlight .” A phrase of the song, a breath. “That … was us? Once upon a time? Lovers, in a past life. That was us. You, and me. A me. Something.” Adam’s fingers traced a spiral in Methos’ palm. He looked back up at green-gold eyes, lit from behind with lightning. “And you remember it, all of it, don’t you?”
"Every second," Methos said softly. He could feel the trail of Adam's fingers like a brand on his skin; could not take his eyes off the man. "But you shouldn't remember anything at all. I shouldn't even be a familiar-looking stranger." He wanted to cling to Adam, to the knowledge in his eyes, lest it vanish entirely. He was almost afraid to blink. "The first time we met, it was all I could do not to simply stand and stare.”
“I’ve never believed that here-and-now is all there is, no past, no future; though I _do_ believe in grabbing the moment. And, this is one of those moments, isn’t it?” /If I let you walk out of here before we’ve figured out what this is, what it might be, I’ll never see you again, will I? And, that … that’s not in it. I want … whatever this is, could be./ “It was, it is, in the music, in the song. It … connected something.” Adam finally let his arms fold around the man, around Methos, and it felt like coming home to a place he had never been — like a stage, a performance space was home, no matter shape or size or location. It felt right. “Did I do the same, when we met then? I bet I did.” It wasn’t — weirdly — odd to say that. (The words conjured an impression — snow and cold and unhappiness that transformed into a happiness/joy/delight that burned bright in all seasons, and so very long ago, a fire that had never died, for all that time had sealed the bright coals in years like ash, banked, not quenched. A fire that was re-emerging from those recesses, those ashes sending out new sparks, finding tinder ready laid. And that metaphor was getting away from him. Adam held Methos without reservation but also ready to let go at any hint of ‘no’ or ‘not now.’) “Do I want to know how long ago that was?”
"I don't know, but I'll tell you if you decide that you do." Methos let himself lean into Adam's embrace, then let himself return it, taking a deep, shuddering breath at how familiar he was to hold, even after two thousand years' distance. He even smelled the same beneath the overlay of modern scents, and when Methos closed his eyes it was as if those twenty centuries had simply melted away.
"When I first met you," he said, speaking into the curve of Daronwy’s shoulder, "you were standing in the courtyard of my house in the middle of a blizzard, and I half-expected you to bring spring in your wake."
“You were a hostage to the peace between the Romans and the Britons, the second generation of noble and high-born scions to serve that honor. In your time, the Romans got much the better of that deal, while the king your father made the best he could of the sulky specimen he got in exchange from one of the neighboring clans. You were a son of his heart and fully trained Bard. The Romans of course would never think of sending their sons to live with barbarians, only to subdue them.”
