Linguistics?

"I'm back!" Methos called.

"Really?" Xander asked. "That was fast. I thought you'd take the opportunity to run away. Who's your friend?"

"Daniel Jackson," Methos said, and waited to see if Xander recognized the name. He'd always had the strangest ability to at least know of the widest variety of people Methos could imagine.

"The Egyptologist and linguist, or a different one?" Xander asked, right on schedule.

"That's me," Daniel said. "Can I ask, how do you know the name?"

Xander shrugged. "I visited Chicago a few years back and got in a bar brawl with Steven Raynor, who has a huge grudge at you by the way. Your landing pads theory sounds like fun, and don't worry, I took everything he said with a grain of salt."

"That's good…" Daniel said, obviously trying to put Xander into a category in his mind. It was impossible, though; Methos, who had been around long enough that he could easily categorize every person he met in his mental system, still hadn't been able to put Xander in a category with anybody else. "And you're Alex Thomas, right? Linguist?"

Xander burst out laughing. "Adam told you that?" he asked between peals of laughter.

"Not in so many words," Daniel said, looking back and forth between the two in confusion. "I told him I was recruiting for our language department, and he recommended you instead."

"Well, yeah," Xander said. "But because I can do the work, not because of what my degree's in. I'm a doctor of women's studies, not linguistics."

When Daniel stared at Methos like he was crazy, he responded defensively. "What? It's not like I was in contact with him while he was getting his degree. And he knows more languages than both of us combined, and counting the overlapping languages twice."

Xander snorted. "Like that's hard."

"I speak twenty-seven languages," Daniel protested.

Xander shrugged. "I speak more."