Work Text:
Death and taxes were supposed to be the two constants of life, Joe mused. He'd taken a quick break from figuring his personal taxes and the taxes on the bar for some take out Chinese, and he wasn't looking forward to going back to the paperwork. And while taxes were taxes, always and forever there, Death wasn't, necessarily.
Oh, sure, people still died, mortal and immortal. In fact, Duncan had just taken out a pissant little wannabe-headhunter that had had the balls to think he could take on a McLeod after only a couple of decades. But the man who had once called himself Death, he wasn't what you could call constant. He'd left Seacouver eleven months ago without a word, and hadn't been seen or heard from since. Not a phone call or postcard to his friends or his lover, if that's what Joe'd been to him. Not that Joe was terribly surprised, it was Methos' MO to keep on the move, not keep contact. That's how Methos'd managed to hide who he was. Didn't mean he was exactly happy about the "without a word" part. He'd thought Methos would have at least said goodbye.
Joe shook himself out of his ruminations, unwilling to stay maudlin for long. He blindly reached towards the corner of his desk for the fortune cookie, only to hear the crinkle of plastic from the other side of his desk.
"Friends long absent are coming back to you," Methos was leaning against the far corner of his desk, reading the fortune from his cookie, looking as unsure as Joe had ever seen him. "The question becomes, are they welcome?"
Joe leaned back with a wry grin. He knew he should make it harder on the immortal, but life was too short already for a mortal involved with an immortal. "Depends. How are you with taxes, Death?"