torch, [email protected]
May 06-07, 2015
Disclaimer: I don't actually like bananas. Written for little Alex. Do not archive without permission.
Obnoxiously handsome
Methos stood by one of the fruit counters, staring at the bananas and finding something wrong with each and every one of them, when a cheerful voice spoke in his ear, "Those are very good for you, you know. Loads of potassium, or so I hear."
He looked around into an obnoxiously handsome face, and was met with the kind of smile that he felt he needed sunglasses to cope with. Sunglasses and a chastity belt. "Oh, it's you," he said, fighting the urge to take a step back; the bananas were in the way, anyway. "So you really were telling the truth, then. Hello, Jack."
The smile dimmed a bit, and Jack looked thoughtful-going-on-confused instead. That was a good look on him, too, of course. "Have we met before? I'd like to think that I'd remember someone like you."
"I'm sure you will," Methos said. "Completely sure, in fact." After a tiny wobble, the confusion on Jack's face cleared up.
"Oh, I see," he said. "Sorry about that. Was it a good first meeting for you?" He waggled his eyebrows suggestively. "Did you... enjoy it?"
"You asked me not to tell you anything about it," Methos said. Not that he would have, anyway, because he'd done enough reading over the years about time loops and perceived events and quantum this and probability the other, and also, it was more fun this way.
Although telling Jack just how many times they'd killed each other might have been interesting.
"I never thought of myself as a spoilsport," Jack said. He picked up a banana and began to peel it in quick, decisive gestures. "Can't have been that long ago." The head-to-toe look was probably meant to assess Methos's age, though it also managed to be both lascivious and approving, of course.
"Doesn't seem like all that long ago to me." Late 1870s, Methos thought, or was it early 1880s? He'd idled away a decade around that time, doing nothing much. Except Jack, come to think of it.
"Good." Jack ate half the banana in two bites. "But since we're both here right now, maybe we could--"
He broke off at the sound of, well, the sound of something coming from behind a nearby row of canned goods. Methos frowned; the sound was vaguely mechanical, and at the same time whooshy, like the bellows of a very large organ, or... No, he couldn't place it at all, but he was entirely certain that it didn't belong here. It wasn't a supermarket kind of noise at all. "Do you know what that is?" he asked Jack, one hand creeping inside his coat.
"Yes," Jack said, frowning at his banana. "I have to go now. Nice meeting you, though!" He grabbed Methos with his free arm, stepped in close, and kissed him. He was, as Methos was intimately aware, very good at that, even when he tasted like banana. Methos could have done without getting bent backwards over the fruit counter, though. The kiss ended, and Jack went on, "Really looking forward to next time!"
He ate the rest of the banana in three more bites, dropped the empty peel in Methos's hand, and disappeared behind the canned soup and tuna. Methos kind of wished he could look forward to next time, too, but it was last time for him, and his life, however long it went on, only took him in one direction. He was as slow a time-traveller as the rest of humanity; he just didn't stop. All he could do with the past was get farther and farther away from it.
An employee with an upside-down nametag popped up from the direction of the bread and biscuits. She looked reproachfully at the banana peel Methos was still holding. "Going to have to ask you to pay for that, sir," she said.
Methos shrugged, settling his coat and his sword back into place; Jack's enthusiastic embrace had disarranged him a little. "Oh, it was worth it, as far as I can remember."
And given the way Jack bounced around, perhaps they'd meet again, later.