Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

'So you're Methos,' Richie said, accepting the bottle of Coke from Mac and taking his usual sprawl in the big leather chair.

The man who'd occupied the entire couch with his stupid long legs on which he propped a dog-eared copy of John Grisham's The Firm marked his place with a finger and looked up. His expression was pleasantly neutral, as it mostly was whenever Richie was around. That wasn't likely to last, once Richie applied himself to digging under someone's skin. And today, he'd just decided, was the day. They'd been circling the issue on eggshells ever since the dude had showed up, and Richie was tired of it. And bored. The bored part was maybe the most pressing issue.

'You tell me that I am,' Adam Pierson answered. Pleasantly neutral.

Richie pointed his bottle at the man. 'Nuh-uh. That's from the Bible. I know you ain't Jesus, old timer.'

An ever-so-slight twitch of an eyebrow at that. 'Good catch.'

'Foster kid. Inevitably someone throws a Bible at us.' He took a slug of his Coke. 'Guess you were around when they were writing the Bible, huh.'

Mac banged a pot back in the kitchen. It might have been accidental, it might have been a pointed attempt at an interruption. It went unacknowledged.

'Never been particularly religious,' Adam said casually. 'The Pax Romana was nice enough. Good time for travel. I was a merchant then, had a route on the Silk Road. Jade and spices, mostly.' The last sentence was directed at his book, as he settled back into his cushions to resume reading.

'So? What was it like?'

'Very different from this.'

The pot banged again. A little too obviously, this time. Richie continued ignoring it. 'Gotta gimme something, man, come on,' he wheedled.

Adam turned a page. 'Why do I gotta, exactly?'

'Well, for one, it's called making conversation. For two, I don't think it's, like, totally outrageous to demand a little proof.'

The pot clattered thunderously into the sink. 'Richie,' Mac snapped at his back.

'What?' Richie turned his most innocent puppy-dog eyes on his mentor. 'Hey, look, if you believe him, I believe him, you know that, Mac. But come on. Fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice... It's a pretty solid scam, you know? Everyone just has to take your word for it.' He cocked his head at Adam, who'd slung an arm behind his head, evidently unbothered by the accusation. 'Like, how would you even know?'

Mac hustled out of the kitchen drying his hands on a dishrag. The rag hit the back of Richie's head a moment later. 'Be polite,' Mac hissed at him, and kicked Richie's sneakers off the coffee table too as he passed between the two men, attempting a solo sound barrier. 'Adam, you want anything to drink? Joe convinced me to try this Japanese whisky.'

'Sure.' Adam folded the book over his finger, this time, and just laid there looking at Richie unblinking. It was a little unnerving, if also faintly ridiculous, a five thousand year old man-- allegedly-- draped over Mac's couch making himself at home and reading airport trash for fun. Which was totally Richie's point. Sure, it made logical tracks that a five thousand year old man would adapt or die, like how Mac taught him, but there was local colour and there was going in so deep you lost yourself, and what was the point of five thousand years if you only carried the last news cycle? The faux Methos had at least had some damn gravitas. When Richie hit five grand no way would he be keeping it to himself and walking around pretending to be a normie. He'd grow a long-ass beard and wear a fancy bathrobe and surround himself with worshippers or some shit. At least Jesus had had disciples. From what Richie could see, the great mythical Methos was the sound of one hand clapping.

Mac provided his guest a glass with a single ice cube and a couple of fingers of whisky. He also provided a coaster, but Adam put his drink down right on the table without so much as glancing at it. Maybe he was who he said he was after all. You'd have to have five thousand years of confidence to bet on surviving Mac in a domestic.

'So what's proof look like?' Adam asked. Still pleasant. No longer so neutral. Engaging.

Richie sat up for that. Self-conscious. He'd been pushing for it, obviously, but getting it was a bit of a surprise all the same. Adam had a way of holding eye contact that was unsettling. Richie rubbed his palms on his thighs, telling himself they weren't damp with sudden nerves.

'Favourite time period,' Richie opened.

A considering little moue, a slight shrug of the shoulders. 'I enjoyed the late Victorian and Edwardian era,' Adam mused.

Richie scoffed. 'Compelling stuff. That's not even last century.'

'Pardon me for not glorifying some grubby pre-industrialist penicillin-free subsistence hell-hole,' Adam huffed, amused. 'I was living in England again. I wanted to be in a city, access to all the new science, progress. So much inventiveness. Things that made real people's lives measurably better.'

Despite himself, Richie found himself engaging, too, curiosity roused. 'Like what?'

'Well, ether, for instance. I was working as a dentist then. Not just a barber who ripped whole teeth out of people's heads without any anaesthesia. And the foot-treadle drill, that was a huge leap forwards.' Richie opened his mouth, and Adam answered before he could ask it. 'It operated a system of pulleys by pedal, like the old sewing machines. I quite fancied it, paid a pretty penny for it.'

A glance sideways at Mac, leaning on his desk and unabashedly watching their exchange like a man at a tennis match, head bouncing from one side of the room to the other, didn't prove much enlightening. 'Immortals regrow teeth,' Mac shrugged. 'But I've seen those old drills. I don't think I'd want that thing in my mouth.'

'If you could suffer abscesses and gum disease and impacted molars you'd reconsider.' Adam rubbed idly at his neck with the hand behind his head, rolling his shoulders to a more comfortable slump. 'My wife Katya became quite proficient with the treadle. We expanded, even bought our own office. Our son Alexsey took over after I died. My grandson Michael ran it next til he retired in '83.'

Richie was not the only one taken aback by that. Mac opened his mouth, and shut it. Opened it again, but didn't say anything. So Richie filled the blank. 'You have kids?'

'Yeah. Had, anyway. Love kids. Most of my marriages were package deals, wedding and adoptions.'

Mac seemed to have decided not to jump in on this topic, pouring himself another drink and pretending not to be affected by a subject Richie knew for a fact had been a difficult issue with Tessa. Hence Richie's existence in their lives. But that was for dealing with later, when Adam had finished with this shockingly open mood and moved on. 'Did they know what you are?' Richie asked, getting to the point.

Adam transferred his gaze to Mac's half-scraped popcorn ceiling. 'It's different for everyone. Whether or not to share the truth. The whole truth, because it's not just immortality, is it. We do die, and sometimes those deaths are public and once the neighbours know there's no pretending it didn't happen and they just misunderstood. Maybe you can uproot your family and drag them halfway round the world to where no-one knows you and you can start over, new town, new names, new story. Maybe they don't want to be shackled to that constant threat of uncertainty and impermanence. And that's assuming they can handle the idea of growing old whilst you never do. Not everyone can bear it. If you get it wrong, that's lives ruined, generational trauma, et cetera.'

'But... you have grandkids who are still around? Like right now?'

'Great-grandchildren, great-nieces and nephews, a whole family tree of in-laws. Relations on every continent.'

'What, even Antarctica?'

'Not every continent, fine, you pedant, but all the populated ones. Eurasia, the Americas, Africa, and Oceania.'

'Wait, what's Oceania?'

'A continent,' Adam informed him in a tone absolutely marinating in sarcasm. 'Oceania includes Australia and Zealandia, not to mention Polynesia, Micronesia, Melanesia--'

'You just made that last one up. And there were definitely seven continents when I went to school, old man--'

'Don't let him side-track you,' Mac broke in, and Richie blinked, realising it was true. He'd walked straight into that one. Adam lifted his head just slightly to spear Mac with a look. His lips pursed, but when his head relaxed back into the pillow, there were little crinkles of amusement by his eyes.

'When we met,' Mac said then. He swirled the ice in his own glass, but didn't drink. 'You didn't mention any of that. Family.'

'Not really a first date conversation, is it?'

Mac's face flushed, and he coughed. Swilled his whisky. 'It is, actually. Just not with Immortals running from head hunters, I guess.'

Richie made a mental note to follow up on that, too. It wasn't Mac's fault he'd been born in such unenlightened times, but for shit's sake, at some point he had to be this oblivious on purpose. No way he hadn't figured out yet that Adam had been flirting for years. Then again, Mac could be remarkably dense when he wanted to be, and if he didn't want to make a move, he didn't have to. It seemed notable, though, that he also hadn't told Adam to stop moving himself in and leaving his shit all over the loft and sleeping in just his boxers on the couch. That had been an eye-opening morning. 

'When's the last time you talked to your kids?' Richie asked instead. 'Grandkids. Whatever.'

Adam sighed softly. '1897. Sent a couple of telegrams from Chicago that I was set up and ready for them to join me. Never heard back. It happens.'

'Oh.' Richie scrubbed his palms down his jeans again, gripped his knees. 'Sorry, man, that's shitty.'

'Yup.' Adam popped the 'p'. 'But not the shittiest. It's easier than ever to keep tabs on your people from far away. I'm not in their lives, but at least I know their lives are good, that they're well and thriving. It's a comfort.' He rolled his head again, this time to resume his stare with Richie. 'Something for you to consider with your foster sister. You'll probably fuck it up with her. The first few times, really. Fuck yourself up, fuck them up, hopefully less than what you inflict on yourself. I'm sure you don't want to hear that, but I've done it every possible way there is to do it, and it's pretty inescapable. If that helps.'

'Hey,' Mac objected. 'We don't know what's to come, Rich, anything can happen, you don't have to--'

'Thanks,' Richie interrupted. His voice shook, he couldn't hide that, but it felt important to say it, and Adam just nodded, like he already understood. So he said it to Mac, instead, who was working himself up, upset on Richie's behalf. 'I needed to hear that, Mac. The sugarcoating helped in the beginning, when it was all so new and overwhelming, but, uh...' He dug his fingertips into his knees hard enough to tingle. 'All that shit with Kristin. Made it pretty clear that I, uh. I don't know as much as I think I know. That I know enough to be dangerous to myself, and to the people I care about.' He managed a reasonably deep breath, enough to expand his diaphragm, if not the cleansing whoosh of the lungs Mac taught for meditation. 'I never really said it, but I. I'm sorry, about that-- whole thing. With her.'

'Richie.' Mac sat on the arm of the other chair, near enough to reach a hand to Richie's shoulder. 'No apologies are necessary.'

'A lady died. Kind of think they are.'

Adam's face had settled into something graver than Mac's determined empathy. He tapped at the book cover so lightly it couldn't be heard, and nodded his acceptance. 'Kristin would have found a way in no matter what,' he murmured. 'It was never an accident, her turning up here. I don't think it was an accident your foster sister got a call from her agency, even. She targeted you.'

'And I fell for it,' Richie finished bitterly.

'She was a thousand years old, and you're, what, twenty? Cut yourself some slack.' Adam shrugged. 'You'll be a little smarter next time, and a little smarter the time after that. No other way out but through.'

'Okay, that kind of feels like piling on.' Mac gave his shoulder a squeeze, and Richie mustered a laugh at Adam's unrepentant grin. 'Thanks. I guess.'

'No worries.'

Shit was getting heavy. Richie rescued his Coke from the coffee table-- carefully perched exact centre of the coaster Mac had placed for him-- and wet his throat with it. 'Silk Road, huh.'

Adam had just opened his book. He closed it quite patiently, and set it on the ground, leveraging himself upright on the couch, arms slung across the back. 'Yeah. Started off in Antioch. Always had the wanderlust, wanted to see the world.'

'Were you married then?'

'Rich,' Mac muttered, nudging him with an Italian leather loafer.

'It's all right,' Adam assured them both. 'I'm sure I would have been. We're talking about, oh, a couple of hundred years, two-fifty, maybe. Good set-up, that. Could just pick another city along the Road and call myself my own son or nephew or what have you. Ah... Timotha. Met her in a taberna in Athens. Widow with two boys. Pestilence, plague, whatever we'd call it now. Lost her and little Timothy. Kept Euaemon with me til he was old enough to apprentice out, saw him married off a few years later. Yocheved next, I think, one of my unhappier relationships-- she didn't like the caravan life. Absconded with a handsome young soldier in Medina. Džana, the beauty of Istanbul. Batting above my average on that one, if you take my meaning. If she hadn't been twice widowed her brother would never have let me court her. Five children between us, those were good years. I lingered too long there, ignored the whispers, the warnings. Bad end.' He fell silent for a moment, and neither Richie nor Mac prodded him, exchanging instead sympathetic glances. 'Got stuck in Roman Gaul after that, caught up with the Merovingians. Relentless in-fighting, constant civil war. Brutality was currency... assassinations, infanticide, poisonings... look up what they did to Queen Brunhilda, sometime, if you want to saddle yourself with nightmares for a week. Then again, for all she'd done before they tortured her and had her torn apart by wild horses, you could argue the sentence was too lenient. Dark years. I... I lost myself, a bit. I'd grown soft, those centuries avoiding the sword, pretending at mortal concerns, thinking I could hide if I just closed my eyes on the rest of it...'

'Culloden,' Mac said, and cleared his throat again. He dragged his chair a half a foot closer to Richie before he sat, maybe for the comfort of nearness. Richie bumped his knuckles into Mac's shoulder, offering what he could. Mac gave him a glum little smile that didn't reach the eyes. 'I know what you mean, how you can get-- lost is the word, isn't it. Lost in the violence. The... vengeance. Revenge. But blood never really slakes the thirst, does it.'

'No.' Adam picked up his glass, half ice-melt, now. He didn't drink, but turned it around and around in his hands, a little ritual that seemed to ground him. 'Never knew Jesus, no,' he said abruptly. 'But I did know a saint. Radegund. She... it's hard to describe. Brought me back to myself. Buoyed me up to be something better. Gave me a light to follow when I was drowning in the darkness.'

'Who was she?' Richie asked. 'Or, uh, is? Is she Immortal, too?'

'No. I think maybe you can't be. Be Immortal and reach that level of-- mortality may be necessary, do you see what I mean? To know you will die, maybe even soon, it's an urgency, isn't it? A fervor. You believe because you have to, or you'd never stay sane whilst the world burns down around you.' He brought the glass to his lips, but had only the smallest sip, rubbing his nose, his eyes. 'She tried many times to explain it to me. I lost her letters a long time ago, but I can still recall every word. She was a truly remarkable spirit.'

'How did you meet?' Mac prompted him gently.

Adam drank, this time, leaving just the ice behind. He set the glass on the coaster, earning himself a little snort from Mac, and returning a small smirk. He stayed hunched over his knees, his shoulders loose, at least, but it was a different mood from before. Not a recitation of facts, a sprinkle of anecdote to satisfy Richie's passing curiosity. Not even the advice of an elder dropping a few salient truths on a youngster who needed to learn them. Just a man, a very old man in an evergreen body, weary and weighed down with too much inescapable history. That, Richie thought silently. That looked an awful lot like proof.

'I'd made myself useful to Chlothar, one of the four sons of Clovis, the first Frankish king. When Clovis died and they divided his kingdom, Chlothar inherited a goodly portion, but it wasn't enough for him. He was a jealous little shit with an insatiable lust for power who never got over not being the favourite. That describes most men of his ilk, unfortunately, so he spent the rest of his life cheerfully battling his brothers, his neighbours, and what few legitimate enemies he had for their land. He managed it in the end, reuniting the entire kingdom, not that he did a damn thing to prevent exactly the same problem befalling his own heirs, but this isn't his story.' He washed his big hands against each other slowly, long fingers aligning and overlapping. 'He found some pretext to invade the Thuringi, central Germany, around 530. The princess Radegund and her brother survived the butchering, and Chlothar took them back to his court. A child bride of ten years was too much for even Chlothar to swallow, thank whichever deity you please, so he set her to one of his villas to age into it in genteel confinement. He made me her guardian.

'Total chance. I wasn't terribly important in his court-- that was a surefire way to get thumbed for betrayal or scapegoating. But I was literate and had a head for strategy, and I'd done well enough in some desperate circumstances to merit a reward. It was in the nature of an honourarium, I suppose, a responsibility like that. Chlothar was already four times married by then and I doubt he could even count his many mistresses-- Christianity was a little looser in those days, especially if you had the power and the money to do what you wanted. Radegund was helpful in securing his gains in Germany, but insignificant enough to ignore for a few years, too. I was... I was not a particularly good man, in those days. I drank too much because it helped put all the restive fury in me to bed. I had a few mistresses myself, and I can't even remember their faces, much less their names. I was... tired. I was just so very tired. And, quite honestly, a danger to myself. I had taken to keeping a knife I liked tucked inside my shirt. I didn't let myself think what I meant to do with it, but it had become some strange kind of comfort to have it there, whenever I needed... I took the assignment with poor humour, as you might imagine. But it was one of the best things that had ever happened to me.

'I could just-- breathe, again. The villa was far enough from the Frankish fiasco that I could sleep without smelling burning fields and rotting flesh, could... could dream without the chorus of screams and swords clashing, could just-- unclench. I finally put that knife away where I couldn't see it. Stopped looking longingly for windows to throw myself out of. Stopped wondering-- so often, anyway-- if it was really worth living forever if this was all there was to live for.'

'Adam,' Mac murmured, one hand reaching, just a bit, only to fall when he realised they were too far separated to breach the distance.

Richie inhaled, and went for sincerity over substance. 'That fucking sucks, man. I'm really sorry that happened to you.'

Adam's eyes focussed for the first time in minutes. He blinked, and then he gave Richie a twitchy little nod. 'Yeah. It did suck.' He exhaled a dusty little laugh. 'It really did. And I was by any account part of the problem-- it's not like I was fighting for truth and justice or to protect the innocent. Until Radegund.'

'Tell us about her,' Mac invited, and Adam's smile was a little more solid, this time.

'You ever want to feel sorry for someone, find yourself a mediaeval woman uprooted from everything she's ever known and enslaved into marriage in another land where no-one speaks her language or knows her customs, where you never know a minute of privacy, where you're being raised like a prize pig to bed the man who killed your father and brothers, and no-one ever bothers to treat you like a person. Traumatised doesn't really cover it adequately; more like a living nightmare where you happen to dine on silver and wear gowns of gold thread. She was a plain little thing, small for her age, and at first I thought she'd been driven dumb-- unable to speak after everything she'd been through. I started having her attend meals with me. Trying to accustom her to Frankish ways, the things she'd need to know when she was finally sent to Chlothar's court. I'd read to her, anything I had to hand-- read at her, I suppose, I'm sure it sounded like so much gibberish at first. Then I thought to have her come sit with me at my desk, piled up on cushions so she'd be tall enough, and I'd have her follow along the words with my finger as I read. I had a rather nicely illustrated Book of Psalms. Ignoring the bits about God, I liked them for the poetry.' He let his head hang, rubbing at the join of his neck as if it were sore or stiff. 'It was more for me than for her. We'd be hours at it, and those were hours where I didn't think about anything outside those four walls. And then I started to take her beyond the walls to fill all the rest of my hours, too. We'd go riding the hills or visit the village to collect the taxes, train the hawks and the dogs, hunt the woods. Everything together, her never more than a few feet from me. And... and I began to think of her as mine. I knew it was stupid. I knew it was dangerous. But she'd begun to trust me, and sometimes she'd... she'd come sit on my knee instead of her chair, and my heart just...

'And then one day she turned to look up at me and said in perfect fucking Latin that God knew I was sad, like God knew she was sad, and one day He would answer our prayers and set us free.'

'What'd you do?' Richie blurted, then fell back, abashed. He'd been caught up in the story, the rhythmic but raw way Adam told it.

It broke the spell, anyway. Adam stood, and Richie and Mac watched as he shuffled round the coffee table to pour himself another dram from Mac's Japanese whisky. He drank it in sips, a bit at a time, til the glass emptied again.

'My duty,' he said finally. 'I did my duty. When Chlothar called her to court on her eighteenth birthday, I took her there myself.'

'Why!' Why he was shocked, Richie couldn't have said. Just that it seemed to have been building to another conclusion, and he felt robbed. Appalled. Distressed, like it was all happening right now, not fifteen hundred years ago.

Adam seemed to grasp that, too, and tilted his head at Richie, brows slightly furrowed. All he did, though, was sigh. 'I should have run,' he admitted. 'There were reasons not to. Not least what would have happened to us both if we were caught, and we would have been, deep in Chlothar's territory with no clear path to escape, drastically outnumbered by his loyalists. But maybe it would have been preferable, to go down knowing we'd at least tried. I don't know. I still don't know. But I didn't think it would work, then, and I convinced myself that timid obedience would mean Chlothar would simply ignore us, forget about us. He'd consummate the marriage, sire himself another heir, and be off to fight another war, and pray God he'd catch an arrow in the eye or sepsis in a wound and die the agonising death he deserved. Radegund... trusted me. She said. Trusted God to act through me, she said. And maybe I was desperate to believe that was possible, if we needed it badly enough.'

'It didn't work out that way,' Mac guessed quietly.

'No.' Adam poured again, a sloppy slosh that dripped onto his henley as he raised the glass to his lips. 'She never got with child, at least, so her God gave her that much. But then Chlothar had her last living brother killed, I don't even remember why. Because he could, probably. At least this time she was smart enough not to wait for me to rescue her. She fled the court alone, middle of the night, with just a maidservant and a purse of her jewels. She convinced the Bishop of Noyon to offer her sanctuary, and impressed him so much with her piety that he bequeathed her a deaconship. She saved herself. And I never saw her again.'

'Did that Clod-air dude catch her?' Richie pressed, even as he dreaded the answer.

Thankfully, Adam denied that with a shake of his head. 'Oh, he raged at the humiliation. People died for it-- servants, the men of the watch, anyone he could call responsible for it. But she finally had the protection of the Church, and even Chlothar wouldn't disrespect the sanctity of holy grounds. Oddly enough, though, he mellowed rather quickly. They came to something of a cordial agreement on it-- she had a way of persuading the most vicious beast not to bite. He even allowed her to found a monastery on her own royal estate at Poitiers. And she was incredible. From that small silent child numbed by violence to a leader with a calling. She attracted hundreds of high-born converts. Collected famous relics, even a piece of the True Cross, if you believe that sort of thing. Befriended Venantius Fortunatus and the bishop Gregory of Tours who lavished her with praise for her wit, her kindness, her miracles. And she made sure every nun there could read and write. That no woman under her roof would ever be alone without the resources to save herself.'

'But... you never saw her again?'

'No. I--' Adam heaved a breath, let it out slowly. 'I never tried to see her. I thought-- it doesn't matter. I didn't want to intrude, to remind her... I don't know. I made my own escape eventually; Chlothar died in 561, and I sailed for Italy within the week. I never stayed anywhere long, after that, afraid of getting caught up in some new layer of hell. But I always left word with the nearest abbey where I was, where I was going. And one day a letter caught up to me. She had dreamt of me, she said. She dreamt of me and wanted me to know she was watching over me. I broke down weeping in the street.' His voice dried out on the final word, and there was a moment of tense silence, his throat working as the other two stared at him. 

'I still see her sometimes, you know,' he rasped. 'Corner of my eye. The crowd will part and she'll be there, ten years old, gap-toothed and tugging at my sleeve. She wrote to me for decades, til the very day she died. She was a prodigious writer. Pages and pages about her day, her women, her work, so that it felt like I was still with her, wherever she was. Her ruminations on God and the hereafter. Her poetry. She wrote such fucking beautiful poetry.'

Silence, again. But of the cathartic kind, pain expunged. Confessed-- if you were into that kind of thing. Maybe the five thousand year old man wasn't religious, but Richie had been Baptist for eight months once and knew a conversion when he saw it.

'Okay,' he said at last. 'I believe you.'

Mac swatted him.

Adam looked up from his empty glass. Opened his mouth, and then grinned instead. He chuckled to himself as he poured another drink. 'I haven't provided even the tiniest sliver of anything even remotely resembling proof, you know.'

'Eh. Unless you got an Immortal birth certificate, I guess it's just a leap of faith.' He finished his Coke, suddenly parched. 'The other Methos didn't talk like you.'

'Ad nauseam?'

Like he'd seen the worst in himself and learnt how to hate it, but also how to live with it. A little embarrassing, in retrospect, how easily Richie had fallen for the fake Methos's bullshit. He'd been looking for something to believe in. Like the real Methos, who'd had it and lost it.

No... no, not lost it. 'I think that's what I want to believe,' Richie said aloud, and Adam waited him out as he fumbled for the words with unusual care, wanting to say it right. 'Immortality, I mean, I want... yeah. I think what I want to believe is that-- is--' He shook his head, frustrated.

'It doesn't have to be pretty to be true,' Adam told him, and it was like his advice earlier, that Richie'd fuck it up and eventually figure out how not to repeat himself too badly. It wasn't pretty, but it rang true.

'I want to believe that's how immortality works, at five hundred, five thousand. Not thinking mortals are, like, disposable, the way Kristin did. And not, like... not completely immaterial, like the fake Methos, like not even relevant to the Game or no Game question, like we're the only ones who even matter in the world. Treasuring them. Loving them, and living with them, not just around them, you know? Seeing our own humanity in them. Keeping our humanity because of them.'

'I like that,' Mac agreed, husky-voiced, reaching again to grip Richie's knee, solid and warm. His eyes were bright, the way they still got sometimes, when he was thinking of Tessa especially. 'I like that, Rich. I want to believe that, too.' But then he looked across the table to Adam, and said simply, 'Alexa would be proud of you.'

The name was vaguely familiar, but Richie had grown used to the way Immortals referred to people and places thousands of years ago like it meant anything to anyone else, and he didn't press it. Adam shook his head, anyway, but put Mac off with a pacifying gesture. He left his glass on the desk, and fwumped back into the ass-shaped crater he'd left in the couch, adopting his customary expansive stretch to cover the entire length. He picked up his book from the rug, and determinedly opened it back to his page. 'Did someone say pizza?' he asked idly. 'Getting hungry in here.'

'Pizza Haven or Pagliacci?'

'Northlake Tavern.'

'They don't do delivery.' Mac, the big pushover, yielded immediately. 'I'll get my coat,' he muttered, and made a show of stomping off, but it wasn't terribly convincing, and Adam peeked with a fond little crinkle of his eyes, following him out the lift.

'Hey,' Richie said, and Adam startled, just slightly, returning to his book a little too ostentatiously. Richie kindly pretended not to notice. 'Just-- thanks, man.'

Adam turned a page he almost certainly hadn't read a word of. 'No worries, kid.'

'No, I mean. You know. Thank you, Adam.'

Pleasantly neutral, the way Adam looked at him. Well. Maybe not quite so neutral, now. 'Yeah,' Adam said, and went back to his beach reading. Richie left him there to fetch himself another Coke from the fridge, and turned on the radio on his way back, filling the loft with the low vibrating hum of Nirvana. The late evening sun cast orange shadows on the scuffed floorboards, and Richie put his feet back up on the coffee table. The quiet was peaceful, and neither disturbed it.