Title: Don't you see...?
Author: Arsenic
Rating: R (Implied Slash)
Characters: Methos/Mulder/Krycek, Amanda, Eli (OMC)
Archives: Seventh D, anybody else with permission
Summary: Ninth in the AM series. Krycek does what he should not; it catches up with him.

Disclaimers: I stumbled upon Methos and Amanda while out for a walk one day, but R/P/D will eventually ask for them back. Mulder and Krycek are on loan from Ten Thirteen and CC. The title is stolen with all due respect from David Mamet's "All Men Are Whores."

Thanks: To Dana for the quick-as-all-that beta. To my girl, for still hanging in there, nine parts later.

^^^

"Yeah, well, to say the least, the evening was something of a disaster. Duncan was not a happy man when we woke up." Amanda waited to give her closing quip. "Not at first, anyway."

Methos dipped his head in amused acknowledgment of the entendre and looked up to see that Alex had joined them. "You're home early."

Alex shrugged and walked to sit in the chair next to Methos. "It's not exactly a nine-to-five job." He grabbed an extra cup from the coffee tray and poured himself some coffee. "Nice to see you again so soon Danielle."

"What do you do, Alex?" Her eyes surveyed the man as he took a sip of the coffee. There was nothing wrong with looking, after all.

"Something that can't be pushed into an eight hour time slot. You?" Alex bent down to unlace his shoes, kicked them off and placed his feet on Methos's lap.

"I'm in acquisitions." She poured herself a second cup of coffee.

"For anyone I would have heard of?" Alex nearly laughed. He knew as well as she did what acquisitions was a synonym for.

"It's a rather small independent company." She turned to look out the window and introduced a sudden change of conversation. "How did you find out about us? Did he tell you?" Amanda was fascinated that Alex knew about immortality and not Mulder.

"He didn't have a choice. He woke up from a bullet to the chest. A vulnerable part of the chest. It was somewhere I would have aimed." He said the last part almost as an afterthought.

Amanda thought about this revelation. She glanced at Methos who was studiously avoiding gazing back. "You're going soft."

"You were always soft." The older man said it without looking her way.

"Maybe, but I'm not the focus of this discussion."

Alex closed his eyes and opened them. "Should I feel special?" The question was left to either Immortal to answer.

Amanda did the honors. "Yeah, I would. You would hardly have been the first person he's conveniently disposed of to protect 'that-which-must-be-protected.'" She snickered.

"Don't paraphrase Anne Rice." Methos sounded put upon.

Alex swung his feet to the ground and leaned over to kiss the other man. "I'm going to take a shower. The coffee was good." He got up to leave the room. He lifted Amanda's hand in his and placed a kiss on the surface before leaving.

Amanda smiled after Alex before turning to Methos. "What have you gotten yourself into?" She shook her head with mild censure. "Not that you don't have good taste, mind you. If I felt the need to be catty, I could easily choose either of your new toys to play with." Methos opened his mouth, but she forestalled him by continuing. "However, that one is a killer; among other things, I would guess, seeing as how he picked up on my occupational reference. The other one you obviously don't trust enough to tell. Can you trust this one to keep quiet?"

"Yes." It was said firmly, without explanation.

Amanda sighed. "If you were lonely, you could have come to me. If it was a male you wanted, I could have fixed you up with Cory; he's busy doing nothing at the moment. You didn't have to go out and pick yourself up the tweedle-dum/tweedle-dee department of Smith & Wesson."

Methos looked confused. "Alex is a grown up. Mulder...Mulder tries."

"I was referring to the age difference not to permanent childhood on their part, and what's more, if you were actually listening to me, you would have understood that."

"I am listening. You're not telling me anything I don't know."

"Then get out. I mean, Alex is obviously completely mindless over Mulder; after a few days things would be great for them."

"Thanks."

"I didn't mean it like that. This is dangerous, for you and for him, especially considering that these people I'm looking into might not be satisfied with just one Immortal toy." She twisted her last words. "If word gets out..."

Methos considered what she was saying. "Why do you stay with Duncan when staying means danger?"

"You don't love either of these men."

"How do you know? Do you think me incapable of it?" Methos turned to glare at her.

Amanda thought about the man across from her. The few times he had indulged her with stories about him had been memories so ancient she could infer almost nothing about his modern-day self from them. There had been Alexa, though. And regardless of what he would say, she knew he loved her and Duncan, if in a completely different way. "No." Her voice admitted defeat. "Not incapable. I just hate seeing you play with fire. Duncan is not the only person I would stay around even if staying meant danger." She hoped she wouldn't regret that admission.

"You never have."

"You've never asked. Duncan...he lets me know I'm needed. Not in that 'I need you, stay with me forever' way, but when I wake up next to him and he's still holding on for dear life, I know. You never let on. I always figured that if I walked out before you woke up, you wouldn't much notice."

"So why do you keep offering?"

Amanda shrugged and looked at the table. "Female foolishness I suppose." She was surprised to feel his hands on her shoulders; she hadn't heard him move.

"Then I am lucky you are so foolish." He knelt beside her chair. "I can't leave them. I probably could make myself, but I don't want to find out what it would take."

She nodded. "I've seen that place before."

"Stay."

"Is that a request?"

Methos stared up at her. "Please."

She kissed his forehead. "Well, I have to be here for a while anyway. Might as well. Troublemaker." Her hand found his. She squeezed.

"That's me."

^^^

Alex let water that was just a little too hot course down his body. Regardless of what he had told Will and Danielle, he had left the compound early today. He made his mind regress back to that morning; he needed to think things through.

Alex had gotten a call on his cell phone at seven that morning and had hurried to headquarters where the Englishman had requested his presence.

"We have a job for you." The Englishman had quieted for a second, and then, as if figuring there was no reason to hide what he would say next, had continued on. "A test, if you will."

Alex had followed the other man to his car in silence and had driven them to their destination, following the directions dictated to him. They had stopped outside of the lab complex. Inside the lab they had entered, a man had lain sleeping, restrained in a near-crucifix position on a table in the center of the room.

"This is your test." The older man had indicated the table with a nod of his head. Alex had kept silent, waiting for more. The Englishman had indulged him. "Approximately four months ago, one of our agents witnessed this young man survive what appeared to be repeated direct hits by lightning. Since then our doctors have poked, and prodded, and tested to their hearts content. Apparently, this man has incredible powers of healing as well as the ability to survive death countless times over. We want you to find out what he knows of this phenomena."

Alex had tried to think through the panic that seemed to be ruling his vital organs at that moment. His test subject was one of Will's "others." He had said the first logical comment that came to mind. "How do you know he knows anything? Perhaps he's just an idiot who got lucky."

"Perhaps. We're quite certain you'll be able to find out for us." With this, the Englishman had turned on his heel and walked crisply out the door.

*Shit.* The Englishman had said it was a test, so they would be watching. That took lying about his actions out of the picture. He had spared the man on the table another glance. *What is the problem here? Will never asks about your work, and you never say anything. You don't know the man on the table and can't kill him. Plus, it has been quite a while since you've gotten the chance to work on your interrogation skills.* Not that this had ever been one of his favorite parts of the job. When he really thought about it, he didn't have any favorites.

Alex had stood over the table for several minutes, knowing he didn't have any choices. Well, he could have refused, but then, he had never willingly risked his safety for what was the "right" thing to do. That morning hadn't seemed like the appropriate time. Not when he was so close to true infiltration. Besides, he had reasoned, neither Will nor Mulder had to know. If they found out, well, it wasn't like they didn't know who he was. Alex had stared down at the task below him and modified that thought. //What// he was.

Torturing an Immortal had been an exercise in creativity. Their pain did not precisely linger in the same way a mortal's would. It had taken him most of the morning just to find a rhythm. It had taken all afternoon to figure out the appropriate times to break out of that rhythm.

Even with the difficulties presented, it shouldn't have taken him that long. His teachers had always been pleased at his innate ability to seek other's weakness in pain and fear. He had felt himself holding back and just hoped that none of the hesitation came across on tape. He had prayed desperately for the detachment he was so used to in these situations. By four o'clock he had not learned anything and had not been anywhere near the state of emotional numbness he'd been seeking. So he had tidied up and left for home. Home, a chat with his Immortal lover and that lover's Immortal friend.

Krycek's mind came back to the present, and he turned the water control so that the water left streaks of red burn marks against his skin. He stayed directly beneath it until he was shivering under distinctly frigid water.

^^^

Two evenings later Mulder was the first one to reach the phone when it rang in the middle of dinner. "Hello?"

"Which boytoy might I be speaking to?" Amanda knew Mulder only put up with that term when it came from her.

"The sexier one; my voice doesn't give it away?" Mulder adopted the deadpan he reserved mainly for thickheaded small-town sheriffs. "I'll go get my keeper for you." He held out the phone to Methos who rose lazily to get it. He took it, placing his hand over Mulder's on the receiver and pulling the younger man in for a kiss. The kiss was deep and possessive; Methos's tongue licked at the roof of Mulder's mouth before swirling around Mulder's tongue. Methos abruptly pulled away to take the call. Mulder took a few moments for reorientation before walking back to the table.

"Where have you been?" Methos asked the question as if Amanda hadn't come around for months instead of a day.

"Prowling. I think I found a way to get to our boy." She was the aural version of nervous tension. Her thief instincts had kicked in, even if this was more of a kidnapping than robbery.

"Your." Methos decided that correcting her pronouns from the beginning would be the safest way of avoiding danger later. "Your boy." He felt the two pairs of eyes glance up at him from the table but ignored it.

"Ah, yes. Well, you see, that's the thing." She adopted a tone of entreaty that had worked on almost every man for nearly twelve hundred years.

He recognized the voice and cut her off before she had the chance to warm up. "No."

"I haven't even begged yet." She was not giving up without a fight.

"I like my friends with some dignity." He gave the vocal equivalent of a shrug.

She dropped the tone. "Please, you've got a house. I don't know where else to take him; the hotel isn't precisely low key."

Methos glanced at the two men whom he knew were eavesdropping, even though they tried to appear as if they weren't. Mulder felt the older man's eyes on him and looked up, favoring Methos with a guilty grin. Another Immortal would be complicated. One was company with them, two a crowd. Three was cause for rioting.

Then there was Mulder's inquisitiveness. At least he could count on Alex. He sighed silently. "You get to handle the explanations."

Amanda allowed herself a smile. "I'm sure we'll think up something."

^^^

Amanda had planned this operation carefully, not wanting or needing complications. She had planned the break in for one in the morning and, figuring in the forty five minute drive, told Methos to expect her and someone else by three. She was hoping this would give her a window of fifteen minutes. Anything longer than an hour inside the complex could prove dangerous and messy.

Getting in turned out to be less of a problem than she had anticipated. It did not take long to find the other Immortal once she was in, the tingle of him leading her straight there. The state of his body told her how much damage had been done. It took a long time for an Immortal's healing process to become slow, but he still displayed bruises, and cuts, and severe swelling from having been worked on over six hours ago at the very least.

"Eli?" She whispered the name Duncan had given her. He looked at her warily.

"Who are you?"

"My name is Danielle." She had set to work on his restraints.

"No. You haven't taken my head. Who are you?" He wondered for a moment why this mattered to him as she was a way to freedom. He pushed the thought aside; it just mattered.

"Duncan sent me." Amanda didn't have to look to feel the other man's exhausted smile.

"I take it I owe him one?"

"Don't we all?" Amanda stepped back and helped the man to his feet. He motioned to a counter and she noticed the sword lying there, incredibly out of place.

"They gave me to a new guy a few days ago. When he found out all the details, he asked for the sword. Seems he thought that cutting me with that would make me more likely to talk than a scalpel." He expended the effort to shake his head in disgust.

Both of them held their breath as they made it back out of the building. Amanda prayed they hadn't tripped any silent alarms. She was good, but that building had been something else. She tried not to think about what else the men who owned the place were hiding in there. Once Eli was in the car, she drove off at top speed.

They arrived at the house, and Amanda disarmed the security system with the code Methos had given her. They were about to enter the house when Eli hesitated. She realized she hadn't even paid attention to Methos's buzz.

"Duncan?" His voice sounded so hopeful that Amanda would have lied if he hadn't been about to find out otherwise.

She shook her head. "No, another friend. This is his place."

Eli seemed to want to think about this, only to realize that it couldn't be much worse than where he had come from. Shakily, he walked inside the door she was holding open. Amanda was not surprised to find Methos awake and waiting in the kitchen. He nodded at the man entering the singularly lighted room in the house and offered a chair by way of pointing at it. He looked up at Amanda and was relieved to get the facial equivalent of a thumbs up sign.

Methos grabbed the tea from the stove and poured the man at his table some, sitting down across from him. "You want something to eat?"

Eli took a cautious sip and shook his head. "No, this is wonderful just now." He looked up, surveying both of them. "Thanks. For everything, I suppose."

Methos admired the suspicion that the man still held onto given the circumstances. He smiled slightly. "You're welcome. I'm going back to bed. Danielle knows where things are."

He ruffled Amanda's hair on his way out and grinned when she let out an indignant gasp. "Night."

She didn't respond. When he was gone, she went and sat down where Methos had been.

"What is my host's name?" Eli had nearly finished the tea, and Amanda moved to refill the glass. He put a hand up over the top. "Just some water, please?"

She nodded and got up to get it. "Will. Will Fitch." She returned with the glass.

"Does he know Duncan?" Eli forced himself not to gulp.

She nodded. "You want a shower before bed?"

He looked down at the disgusting state of the wrappings he was wearing. It was odd, until his most recent torturer, he had been left naked. The man with the green-eyes seemed to take objection to that and had left him minimal covering. "Yeah, I'd like that."

The two got up and headed towards the bathroom. Amanda went in to Mulder's room since he seemed the most physically compatible with Eli and stole some sweats. She grabbed some towels from the linen closet. Depositing all this on the toilet, she looked up and told Eli where his room was. "Mind if I slip off to bed now? I'm exhausted."

"Not at all." He grabbed her wrist as she turned to leave and pulled the hand to his mouth where he placed a light kiss on it. "Thank you, miss."

She shook her head in chagrin mixed with soft pleasure. "Duncan always did know how to pick them. Good night."

^^^

Alex was caught up in his own thoughts when he walked into the room he had spent too many hours in over the past week. He was surprised to find the Englishman sitting on the exam table instead of the man he had been interrogating.

"You weren't happy with my work?" Alex threw the question out lightly, hoping that none of his worry was apparent.

"We were neither here nor there on the subject yet, but it seems your man," he patted the table for emphasis, "was the unhappy party."

The meaning of this dawned on Alex. "No way. There is no way he could have escaped. He was in fucking five point restraints, and I have seen the security measures taken just in this part of the complex."

"Regardless, he got out. We think he may have had somebody helping him." The man's tone made Alex look up.

"Do you think that?"

"He didn't get out on his own." The Englishman crossed to the door. "But you didn't help him either."

Alex held back the sigh of relief that lodged in his throat. "Clean-up plans?"

The older man shrugged. "It is hardly worth our time. Who is he going to tell without having to go into more detail than he can possibly want to?"

Alex conceded this point with a nod. "New assignments?"

"Should I need you, I know how to find you." He left and the door shut softly behind him.

*Fuck.* Alex believed in coincidences like two middle-schoolers wearing the same shirt on the same day. He did not believe that the two Immortals he knew had nothing to do with the disappearance of the last.

On the one hand, it was kind of perfect. It couldn't be that hard to find where Danielle and Will had hidden the third Immortal. While the elders didn't seem to be too worried about his sudden absence, they probably would not be adverse to his sudden reappearance either. Which could in turn gain Alex some inroads.

On the other hand, he couldn't go back to torturing the other man. He knew it was a sign of his edges not being as sharp as they had been, and it was for precisely that reason he should force himself to do it. At first it had been about feeling like Will was in the room, watching him; after a while his older lover had even begun to judge Alex. Later it was about the judgment he saw in the eyes of the man on the table. He knew if he looked in a mirror, he would have to see those judgments reflected in his own eyes.

The reality was, if he got closer to providing Mulder with some information by methods that were less than humane, the look of gratitude in Mulder's eyes would be worthless, because it wouldn't be real. Mulder couldn't condone his tactics and in the end, wouldn't be able to truly enjoy the information gained.

Having come to his decision, Alex twirled the keychain he had never put down around his finger and walked in the direction of his car.

Due to an accident on the interstate, it was almost an hour later when Alex finally arrived at the house. He parked his car in the garage and winced at the fact that Danielle's car was in the driveway. He was never in the mood to be tactful right before sex.

He slipped in the front door silently and listened. Surprised to hear a male voice that was neither of his lovers speaking, he moved fluidly to the kitchen door and peered through. Even clothed and animated, Alex recognized the man sitting at his kitchen table.

Methos sensed that someone had joined them and glanced up to smile at Alex. He was about to introduce Eli when the man moved from the chair to hold a sword that had suddenly appeared at Alex's throat. Alex could have accepted these circumstances, sword and all, had Will not drawn a sword from unseen territory as well to hold at his attacker's throat. Danielle was standing back some ways, a third sword held in both hands, unsure of where it should be placed.

"You have a sword." Alex pointed the fact out to Methos as if his statement could change the obvious.

Eli looked at the two men, trying to decide who was the more immediate threat. The sliver of metal at his throat convinced him it was the other Immortal. He retracted his sword but kept it in defensive mode. "Is this some kind of a joke?"

Amanda hadn't budged from her stance of a moment ago. Her muscles bunched slightly at the question.

"You're the one threatening my lover in my house." Methos kept his voice level and his sword at his side. His body looked as deceptively negligent of the weapon as his voice sounded about the subject at hand.

Eli was about to retort when Alex cut in. "He has the right, Will."

Methos turned to face his lover. "Oh?"

Alex swore softly in Russian. Will was going to hand him over when he was done explaining. He might even want to watch Eli practice his carving skills. If he shot all three of them, he could probably be gone before they ever awoke. His brain was in the process of commanding his hand to grab the gun at his side when he looked at Will. The two men communicated silently for a moment. Alex tried to remember the last time anyone had forgiven him as much Will had. The swords were proof that Will had kept things from him; all the same, this man had earned as much trust as he had to give.

Alex blinked, breaking the link between them and began to talk. "I could probably pretty this up, but something tells me he is going to get the last word anyway." Alex jerked his shoulders in the direction where Eli still stood. "I work for men who give orders that you obey. The more you obey, the more privileged you become. I have worked a long time for that privilege. When some guy with incredible healing powers showed up and they told me to find out what he knew, he was just another obstacle to that privilege." Alex noticed the irregular rise and fall of his chest only after he stopped speaking. His eyes found the only other person that mattered to him at that moment and inquired as to their status.

"And if it had been me?" Methos stared curiously at the younger man.

Alex stayed silent. He had been hoping that they could skip this question, that Will would either kill him or let his once-prisoner do it.

Methos eyed Eli as he waited for Alex to answer. By all rights, he should let the man have Alex and be done. He had already crossed the boundary of mortal/Immortal loyalty once this year; he wasn't sure he had any interest in doing such again. *C'mon Alex, tell me what to do.*

"I can't..." Alex trailed off and looked into blank hazel eyes. "I could not..." He chewed the inside of his cheek and finger-combed his hair. Finally, he took a deep breath and pushed a sentence out. "Shit. I will not be the cause of your pain."

"As sweet as that is..." Eli made it clear that he found it to be anything but. "If you want to keep your lover with his skin undecorated, I shall have to employ considerably more than words."

Methos rolled his eyes at the man out of pure reaction. "You and MacLeod went to grammar school together, right? Tell me it's so, because I don't want to think that people were taught to speak like that in two places over a considerable amount of time."

Amanda had the grace not to laugh. Eli had the dignity not to speak.

Alex jumped in even before he had anything to say. "Will-"

"I left a few things out of my summary that night that I woke up from being dead. Immortals fight each other. Death is only possible by beheading." Methos kept his tone clipped and watched for any reaction on the part of the other man. Alex acted like Methos had reported the scores from last night's basketball game to him.

Methos turned to the third man in the kitchen. "I don't want to fight over this."

"I understand how you could consider him not worth your life." Eli threw a glance of contempt in Alex's direction. "However, my honor is very much worth my life."

"Honor." Methos gave a twisted smile. "I take it then, that you are young yet." Methos leaned against the counter behind him. "This is not about honor. Revenge and honor have two very different definitions."

"And are you so young that you do not yet know the drive to seek revenge?" Eli stepped forward before realizing how much his motions gave away.

"I have known that drive. Felt it, breathed it, dreamt it. I have also known the disappointment of not achieving my aims. I can remember the rush after vengeance has been completed. But I also carry a spirit decayed by having gotten what I sought time and time again. The rush does not last for half so long as that particular after-taste."

Eli faltered at the words. He glanced over to where Danielle stood, awaiting whatever came. His eyes traveled to Alex who was looking at Will in almost as much confusion as he himself was feeling. Finally he returned his gaze to Will. Everything about the man suggested impassivity. Everything but the fact that he had stationed himself close to the mortal whose protection he held and refused to budge. "You know what he did and yet you still ask me to let this go."

"I know what he did. I also know that I have no right to pass a death sentence over those actions. I doubt you do either."

Amanda tensed at Methos's final words and focused on Eli's reaction. She watched with discomfort as rage lapped at the pupils of the younger Immortal. Methos was going to kill her when this was over. If he was around to do it. She didn't even want to think about how she was going to explain this to Duncan.

"Alex, are your employers looking for him?" She didn't know where the thought came from, but it was something with which to divert the tension.

All three men turned to stare at her. Alex recovered from the shock of interruption and answered. "No. Not worth the effort. They don't think he'll talk to anyone."

"Let's get out of here." She directed the invitation at Eli. Her voice stayed soft, a tired sort of seduction creeping into the tones. It wasn't an offer of true interest, just something to change the tenure of emotions at that moment. She was so used to using her femininity for anything, this didn't seem all that different. "Go see Duncan for a bit, you can thank him in whatever manner your honor demands. I can shop with his money." She smiled, but her eyes stayed focused on Eli.

"You have no problem with letting him go either?" His tone was softer than it had been for Methos, in attest to his awareness of her sex.

Amanda put her sword away while she thought about what to tell him. "Will isn't easy to care for, and he doesn't find it easy to extend care to others. I don't think your vengeance is as important as his humanity."

Eli considered this take. Slowly, he returned his sword to where he had pulled it from. He turned his head in Alex's direction. "Make sure we don't cross paths again." He nodded to Amanda. "I will be in the car." After a few seconds of silence accompanied by the sounds of a man striding, the door slammed, and the three left looked at each other.

Amanda turned a glare on Alex but stayed silent. She walked to Methos and rose on her toes to place a kiss on his forehead. "I won't tell Duncan you're here. You owe me two."

"I let him stay at my house; I think that brings me back to one." Methos kept his voice level, as if what had just occurred was something he dealt with every morning upon waking.

"You wouldn't say your boy was worth at least two?" Her voice chided him.

"At the moment?" An eyebrow rose.

"Don't be cruel; you have a tendency to regret your cruelties later." She took his hand and squeezed before turning and leaving the house. Methos watched her go, wondering not for the first time how much of him she understood and how much he was comfortable with her understanding.

When the door slammed, Methos turned on his heel to stare apathetically at Alex.

Alex shook his head and took a deep breath before returning the look. "The first time you died for me I was so upset with you that when you woke up I was tempted to turn around and kill you myself. Nobody has ever bothered to protect me. I am an expendable, one of those people they hire on television shows so that the monster can have someone to eat. Even so, you took bullets for me. Today you offered to fight a battle that I could not possibly win for me, well-aware that I had betrayed you. I don't know if I can... What if I can't be what you need me to be?"