torch, [email protected]
May 24, 2007
Disclaimer: by request only. Written for _la_la_la for the first kiss meme. Do not archive without permission.
A regrettable omission
Methos & Aziraphale
Methos and Aziraphale have known each other for a long time, although neither one of them will say when or how they first met. At first, they had a rather strained, adversarial relationship, owing primarily to Aziraphale's charitable habit of giving a home to any and all books abandoned by their owner, or books that looked as though they might have been abandoned, or books that were about to become abandoned if the owner just turned his back for five minutes. But eventually, they worked out an arrangement, and by the fourteenth century, they could speak civilly to one another. By the seventeenth century, they had reached a point of socializing, and even talking about matters other than books. And by the early twentieth century, they would occasionally get drunk together and reminisce about the bad old days.
Then they had a bit of a falling-out over a Caxton folio auctioned off at Sotheby's; Aziraphale would have won it, if Methos hadn't lifted his wallet ahead of time. The quarrel lasted for eleven months. They were reconciled at another rare book sale where they both lost the volume they wanted, outbid by an excessively well-dressed sprig of the nobility who apparently had money to burn. It seemed the only sensible thing to do was to drown their sorrows in Aziraphale's finest Tokay.
"No one as young as that can appreciate it properly," Aziraphale said mournfully.
"Mm." Methos stared into his glass. Then he brightened up. "But he'll be dead in another sixty years or so, and then I can have it back. Or you," he added generously.
Aziraphale blinked, confused. "You can have me back? But I haven't been gone." He tried to untangle his thoughts. "And I don't believe you ever have had me, I mean—"
"A regrettable omission," Methos said, and leaned forward and kissed him.
(The next morning, Methos made large amounts of black coffee for them both, and they agreed never to mention the matter to anyone (that decision lasted eleven years), or to bid against that particular young man again (eleven weeks), or to bid against each other, for that matter (eleven days), or to do anything like what had occured during the previous night, ever again (eleven minutes, counting from when Methos set his coffee cup down and said, "I really should be going.").)