Mercer/Will
-coughs-
yes.
References are made very vaguely to this ficlet of mine. HERE
Title: Forgetting Horizons
Rating: very light R-ish
Pairing: Mercer/Will, implied Meckett (because that pairing will show up even if they have nothing to do with ANYTHING xD), past-Will/Elizabeth (bah, canon)
Summary: AU-Post-POTC, Will's in London, Mercer's in London, Lizzie's dead, Beckett's kicked it too - oh my!
Notes: DON'T ASK. I DON'T KNOW.
Notes pt 2: This actually turned out nothing like what I intended. I might get around to writing one that's more darker and more twisted and more Mercer going "Oh! A young innocent thing to break. What fun!" This one is just...I don't even know. It just -is- xD
He moved quietly, was all Will could think as he sank to his knees, black and red blooming before his eyes. The bastard moves quietly. A soft curse, a gloved hand on his shoulder, and he was out.
Voices, loud, distinct, incomprehensible yet so clearly English. There was a cold pinching around his wrists and a throbbing at the back of his head.
“No, he's not the one you wanted - “ The voice cut through his thoughts and he had memories of sun, of sand, of water, of wind, of church bells, and silence. It was the silence that scared him most and he didn't understand why he suddenly felt very lost and alone.
“Ashton grabbed the wrong one - “ the voice was continuing. There had been a girl sometime, a pretty thing with spirit and a wild soul but something had happened and the nights had been dark and there had been pain and gasped breaths and blood and death and doctors and debt and priests and that damnable silence.
“How many colonial boys from Jamaica do we have in this city?” A different voice asked and it made him think of Singapore but he couldn't remember why. Had he been there? He couldn't recall. The child had been too early, that he remembered, too early and the girl not strong enough. For once not strong enough, the only time she had not been strong enough. Salt. And Water. And Sun. And Silence. Not even the waves had made noise.
“Clearly more than one, I know him -“ The first voice was back and Will was recalling docks, knives, pistols, company flags, and an Oxford accent offering him port even though he hated port. A deal had been made, but someone broke it and then there had been chains and then freedom. Freedom because of that voice that said it knew him, that voice that was so sardonic, so cold, so dry, so filled with absent minded irony, that voice that had said something about needing redemption on the odd occasion and that for once his conscious had decided to make itself known.
“It's not him, I know -”
“How?”
“He was in Singapore at the time.”
“You can vouch for this?”
“I was there.”
“But you're sure.”
“He was in jail.”
Silence. Something. Something. Something. “Beckett's monster.” Something and a bottle broke and “He's dead, you know. I watched him die.” A laugh that was cold and a grunt, fabric tore, and there was a gloved hand on his shoulder.
“Mr. Turner?”
Will finally opened his eyes to find a far too familiar scarred face in front of him.
“I didn't do it,” was out of his mouth before he could stop it. A quirked smile and he felt pressure on the side of his neck and he wondered why there was blood everywhere before he passed out.
Will woke and there were white washed walls, a sloping ceiling, books staked on the floor eye level with him, and an open window. He could smell someone cooking and fresh bread. It made him think of markets at Port Royal before he remembered why he didn't like remembering Port Royal.
“My apologies,” the voice again and Will noticed the older man seated at the foot of the mattress. The only other piece of furniture was a chair-less desk. The man was in shirtsleeves and an open waistcoat and Will wondered how he had gotten the blood out. “But carrying you out unconscious was necessary.”
“Er-” he coughed. “What?”
“You look like Christopher Cook.”
“Who?”
“Quite,” he stood and Will was trying to remember the name without remembering anything else. He knew he ought to hate this man for something. For something terrible and unforgivable but he couldn't make himself care. “Sit up, I need to check your head.”
The world turned upside down, like the ship he thought, and when his opened next there was a pot with vomit and blood in front of him.
“Sorry,” he mumbled and a handkerchief was shoved into his view. The name was still a mystery. “You worked for Lord Beckett?”
“Tilt your head back and your nose will stop bleeding. And yes.” A pause, Will look up catching an amused expression and he remembered why he had liked the servant over the master. Social class reasons aside. “Mercer, since you asked.”
“What?” Another cough. More bile burning the back of his throat as he swallowed it back down. A glass of water appeared by his foot. “That is, what happened?”
“You looked like Mr. Cook is what happened.”
“Mr. Cook?”
“Quite,” a blank, appearing somewhat patient, look crossed Mercer's face as he took the pot away. “Do you think you can eat something?”
Will wanted to answer no, no he couldn't stomach anything other than more sleep, and maybe more liqueur, and more opium, and more forgetfulness. That he couldn't stomach anything other than the man's silence and the absence of that quiet questioning gaze. That he couldn't weather much more of anything else. Instead he meekly nodded and drank more water. The answer was satisfactory and Mercer disappeared from the room.
When he reappeared there was tea, bread, cheese, and apples. It was shoved in front of him, offered on the floor since they were lacking a more proper dining area and Will found he didn't care but could see his father-in-law's aghast expression behind his eyes and Mercer seemed to guess something like that and laughed.
“Irregular work,” he explained, cutting an apple in half. “It's been a rough winter but I trust summer will be better.” Silence, cheese was sliced. “What brings you to Town?”
“I don't really remember.” Will paused, turning the apple slice over in his hand. “Well I remember but I don't care to remember. Sorry.” Added after a thought but Mercer didn't seem to mind so Will felt all right and was thankful for the somewhat vague, understanding look he received as a reply. Silence followed the rest of the meal and for that Mercer redeemed himself of every crime ever committed. Or Will felt he should have been, had he had the power it would have been so.
“Why did you come to London?”
They were sitting on crates at the docks in Limehouse and Mercer was studiously watching an elderly merchant. His hands were rolling and unrolling a tobacco leaf he had picked up earlier that morning. Will's eyes were on the horizon and the din of dockyard traffic in his ears. The crates were pricking into his skin but he found he didn't mind.
“Same reason you did.”
“To forget?”
“In a manner of speaking.” The face briefly spoke otherwise and Will knew he would be leaving soon. Leaving the first chance he had and running away somewhere else, somewhere foreign, somewhere without ghosts on street corners.
“Ever been to Paris?” The older man asked after a moment. The tobacco leaf had fallen to the ground with the same grace Will had watched that body had fall onto a flag in the water. He answered with a negative but said he had a knack for languages and spoke French, if Mercer didn't mind company. A blank face moved from the elderly man to the horizon and he knew that he was welcome. Welcome so long as they were both forgetting and running and asking vague, harmless questions and ignoring the world around them.
They ended up sharing a bed in Paris as they had in London which Will didn't mind since it meant warm nights and a feeling of not being alone while he slept. Which was an improvement over the day since he was always alone then. Alone just as Mercer was alone, alone just as the man down the hall who slept with a candle burning was alone, alone just as the old woman with the grandchild who lived above them was alone, alone just as the nameless, wealthy man who came to visit the woman next door was alone. And so the companionable aloneness became habit and Will had a feeling that if this was going to be how his life was spent, he could have done far worse.
Mercer spoke French with an upperclass Parisian accent but would only smile a terribly amused and secretive smile when Will asked.
“Where'd you learn French?” Mercer asked in reply to the fourth or fifth or millionth inquiry.
“Elizabeth, she taught me -” he went silent and Mercer had the good grace to suddenly find himself fascinated by the architecture. There was a Truce after that and they made sure to keep questions on subjects only a year or less old. Or so old they didn't matter anymore.
It was two months in when Will began wondering where Mercer was getting the money from. He asked with sly questions and the older man would give him a look that reminded him of their Truce so he stopped asking. Verbally.
“There are always some things it's best not to know,” was the answer after Will's raised eyebrow.
“Kill people for it?” He asked trying to sound nonchalant as he ate the freshly bought cherries. He would occasionally throw one at Mercer who would only laugh a quick bark of a laugh and eat them in an easy silence.
“Only if I must.”
“Then how?”
“It's of no concern.”
“Lord Beckett leave you money?” He had meant it as a joke but catching the look on Mercer's face made him think otherwise. He threw another cherry by way of an apology as he came to a firm conviction that regardless of where the money was from he was not going to be a kept man. The next week he applied to a local shop and found himself pleased with Mercer's tolerant amusement as he bought him a bag of cherries.
“We're even,” he had said and the older man merely threw a cherry at him as an answer.
It was a hot July night when calloused hands pulled him close so there was a chest against his back and he could feel the occasional scar pressing into his too clean skin that wasn't truly clean at all. Somewhere in the back of his mind he was reminded that his hands were just as dirty as Mercer's and his reasons had been just as mercenary and his life was just as forfeit. The arm wrapped itself around his waist and he watched as the last of the sheets were kicked from the bed, lying crumpled on the floor.
Lying crumpled, crumpled, a heap of shadows on the floor and he was suddenly remembering a dark room with blue walls and Elizabeth's laughing smile, laughing eyes, laughing everything - and the fact that the curve of her waist fit his arm so perfectly it hurt to think of it.
Turning over so he faced Mercer he slid his arm around him and though it didn't fit nearly as well, and felt a little awkward, he figured he could make it work and that it was all right. A brief kiss on his forehead and he was asleep dreaming of blissful nothing.
They had a Sunday habit of buying cherries and strolling along the Seine, stopping at the middle point of one of the many bridges that would bring them to the Notre Dame. Pits and stems would be tossed into the dank swirling water beneath, their shoulders would be touching and it would have been the first contact since the silent disentangling of the morning.
“I've come to the full realization that all cities are the same,” Mercer said one morning as he watched the water. Will gave a noncommittal grunt as the older man was in a rare talkative mood and he was loath to interrupt it. “Manchester, Liverpool, Paris, London, Port Royal, Madrid, Vienna, Rome - they're all the same. Dirty.”
“You've been to Madrid?”
“With my father. Years ago.”
“Perhaps its improved since then.”
“I've my gravest doubts,” the smile on his lips was kind so Will pressed his shoulder closer. “I thought at the time it was because I was eye level with the dirt, being young. But it's not changed with height or age. Gotten worse with age, actually.”
“Quite,” a sardonic smile and Mercer gave him a look bespeaking of annoyance but Will knew he was amused.
“How did she die?” It was asked after a long silence, their feet bringing them to the cathedral more out of habit than any real desire.
“Childbirth.”
Silence. Silence till they stopped and Mercer bought him a coffee and Will said thank you and they changed the subject to their neighbor's lover and Mercer's firm conviction that he was a Marquis and that his name was Maurice-Pierre-Antoine de Fontaine.
Will was watching the moon walk across the sky one evening and Mercer was sleeping on his side with his back to him, shirtless with just breeches and no stockings. The younger man rolled over and pulled the other one close, nuzzling the back of his neck. He soon felt Mercer shifting and there were dark eyes in his vision, fingers in his hair, and a warm mouth on his as he was rolled over with a leg gently nudging his thighs apart and he reasoned that this was perhaps not the worst way to forget. To forget the sun, the sand, the water, the air, the hot Caribbean nights, and the cold church bells as cold as the silence and the sound of canons and guns and swords and the sight of ships with a manic grin and the uselessness of the horizon.
Cassiopaya YOU OWE ME MERCER/NORRINGTON NAO. kthnxbai.
yes.
References are made very vaguely to this ficlet of mine. HERE
Title: Forgetting Horizons
Rating: very light R-ish
Pairing: Mercer/Will, implied Meckett (because that pairing will show up even if they have nothing to do with ANYTHING xD), past-Will/Elizabeth (bah, canon)
Summary: AU-Post-POTC, Will's in London, Mercer's in London, Lizzie's dead, Beckett's kicked it too - oh my!
Notes: DON'T ASK. I DON'T KNOW.
Notes pt 2: This actually turned out nothing like what I intended. I might get around to writing one that's more darker and more twisted and more Mercer going "Oh! A young innocent thing to break. What fun!" This one is just...I don't even know. It just -is- xD
He moved quietly, was all Will could think as he sank to his knees, black and red blooming before his eyes. The bastard moves quietly. A soft curse, a gloved hand on his shoulder, and he was out.
Voices, loud, distinct, incomprehensible yet so clearly English. There was a cold pinching around his wrists and a throbbing at the back of his head.
“No, he's not the one you wanted - “ The voice cut through his thoughts and he had memories of sun, of sand, of water, of wind, of church bells, and silence. It was the silence that scared him most and he didn't understand why he suddenly felt very lost and alone.
“Ashton grabbed the wrong one - “ the voice was continuing. There had been a girl sometime, a pretty thing with spirit and a wild soul but something had happened and the nights had been dark and there had been pain and gasped breaths and blood and death and doctors and debt and priests and that damnable silence.
“How many colonial boys from Jamaica do we have in this city?” A different voice asked and it made him think of Singapore but he couldn't remember why. Had he been there? He couldn't recall. The child had been too early, that he remembered, too early and the girl not strong enough. For once not strong enough, the only time she had not been strong enough. Salt. And Water. And Sun. And Silence. Not even the waves had made noise.
“Clearly more than one, I know him -“ The first voice was back and Will was recalling docks, knives, pistols, company flags, and an Oxford accent offering him port even though he hated port. A deal had been made, but someone broke it and then there had been chains and then freedom. Freedom because of that voice that said it knew him, that voice that was so sardonic, so cold, so dry, so filled with absent minded irony, that voice that had said something about needing redemption on the odd occasion and that for once his conscious had decided to make itself known.
“It's not him, I know -”
“How?”
“He was in Singapore at the time.”
“You can vouch for this?”
“I was there.”
“But you're sure.”
“He was in jail.”
Silence. Something. Something. Something. “Beckett's monster.” Something and a bottle broke and “He's dead, you know. I watched him die.” A laugh that was cold and a grunt, fabric tore, and there was a gloved hand on his shoulder.
“Mr. Turner?”
Will finally opened his eyes to find a far too familiar scarred face in front of him.
“I didn't do it,” was out of his mouth before he could stop it. A quirked smile and he felt pressure on the side of his neck and he wondered why there was blood everywhere before he passed out.
Will woke and there were white washed walls, a sloping ceiling, books staked on the floor eye level with him, and an open window. He could smell someone cooking and fresh bread. It made him think of markets at Port Royal before he remembered why he didn't like remembering Port Royal.
“My apologies,” the voice again and Will noticed the older man seated at the foot of the mattress. The only other piece of furniture was a chair-less desk. The man was in shirtsleeves and an open waistcoat and Will wondered how he had gotten the blood out. “But carrying you out unconscious was necessary.”
“Er-” he coughed. “What?”
“You look like Christopher Cook.”
“Who?”
“Quite,” he stood and Will was trying to remember the name without remembering anything else. He knew he ought to hate this man for something. For something terrible and unforgivable but he couldn't make himself care. “Sit up, I need to check your head.”
The world turned upside down, like the ship he thought, and when his opened next there was a pot with vomit and blood in front of him.
“Sorry,” he mumbled and a handkerchief was shoved into his view. The name was still a mystery. “You worked for Lord Beckett?”
“Tilt your head back and your nose will stop bleeding. And yes.” A pause, Will look up catching an amused expression and he remembered why he had liked the servant over the master. Social class reasons aside. “Mercer, since you asked.”
“What?” Another cough. More bile burning the back of his throat as he swallowed it back down. A glass of water appeared by his foot. “That is, what happened?”
“You looked like Mr. Cook is what happened.”
“Mr. Cook?”
“Quite,” a blank, appearing somewhat patient, look crossed Mercer's face as he took the pot away. “Do you think you can eat something?”
Will wanted to answer no, no he couldn't stomach anything other than more sleep, and maybe more liqueur, and more opium, and more forgetfulness. That he couldn't stomach anything other than the man's silence and the absence of that quiet questioning gaze. That he couldn't weather much more of anything else. Instead he meekly nodded and drank more water. The answer was satisfactory and Mercer disappeared from the room.
When he reappeared there was tea, bread, cheese, and apples. It was shoved in front of him, offered on the floor since they were lacking a more proper dining area and Will found he didn't care but could see his father-in-law's aghast expression behind his eyes and Mercer seemed to guess something like that and laughed.
“Irregular work,” he explained, cutting an apple in half. “It's been a rough winter but I trust summer will be better.” Silence, cheese was sliced. “What brings you to Town?”
“I don't really remember.” Will paused, turning the apple slice over in his hand. “Well I remember but I don't care to remember. Sorry.” Added after a thought but Mercer didn't seem to mind so Will felt all right and was thankful for the somewhat vague, understanding look he received as a reply. Silence followed the rest of the meal and for that Mercer redeemed himself of every crime ever committed. Or Will felt he should have been, had he had the power it would have been so.
“Why did you come to London?”
They were sitting on crates at the docks in Limehouse and Mercer was studiously watching an elderly merchant. His hands were rolling and unrolling a tobacco leaf he had picked up earlier that morning. Will's eyes were on the horizon and the din of dockyard traffic in his ears. The crates were pricking into his skin but he found he didn't mind.
“Same reason you did.”
“To forget?”
“In a manner of speaking.” The face briefly spoke otherwise and Will knew he would be leaving soon. Leaving the first chance he had and running away somewhere else, somewhere foreign, somewhere without ghosts on street corners.
“Ever been to Paris?” The older man asked after a moment. The tobacco leaf had fallen to the ground with the same grace Will had watched that body had fall onto a flag in the water. He answered with a negative but said he had a knack for languages and spoke French, if Mercer didn't mind company. A blank face moved from the elderly man to the horizon and he knew that he was welcome. Welcome so long as they were both forgetting and running and asking vague, harmless questions and ignoring the world around them.
They ended up sharing a bed in Paris as they had in London which Will didn't mind since it meant warm nights and a feeling of not being alone while he slept. Which was an improvement over the day since he was always alone then. Alone just as Mercer was alone, alone just as the man down the hall who slept with a candle burning was alone, alone just as the old woman with the grandchild who lived above them was alone, alone just as the nameless, wealthy man who came to visit the woman next door was alone. And so the companionable aloneness became habit and Will had a feeling that if this was going to be how his life was spent, he could have done far worse.
Mercer spoke French with an upperclass Parisian accent but would only smile a terribly amused and secretive smile when Will asked.
“Where'd you learn French?” Mercer asked in reply to the fourth or fifth or millionth inquiry.
“Elizabeth, she taught me -” he went silent and Mercer had the good grace to suddenly find himself fascinated by the architecture. There was a Truce after that and they made sure to keep questions on subjects only a year or less old. Or so old they didn't matter anymore.
It was two months in when Will began wondering where Mercer was getting the money from. He asked with sly questions and the older man would give him a look that reminded him of their Truce so he stopped asking. Verbally.
“There are always some things it's best not to know,” was the answer after Will's raised eyebrow.
“Kill people for it?” He asked trying to sound nonchalant as he ate the freshly bought cherries. He would occasionally throw one at Mercer who would only laugh a quick bark of a laugh and eat them in an easy silence.
“Only if I must.”
“Then how?”
“It's of no concern.”
“Lord Beckett leave you money?” He had meant it as a joke but catching the look on Mercer's face made him think otherwise. He threw another cherry by way of an apology as he came to a firm conviction that regardless of where the money was from he was not going to be a kept man. The next week he applied to a local shop and found himself pleased with Mercer's tolerant amusement as he bought him a bag of cherries.
“We're even,” he had said and the older man merely threw a cherry at him as an answer.
It was a hot July night when calloused hands pulled him close so there was a chest against his back and he could feel the occasional scar pressing into his too clean skin that wasn't truly clean at all. Somewhere in the back of his mind he was reminded that his hands were just as dirty as Mercer's and his reasons had been just as mercenary and his life was just as forfeit. The arm wrapped itself around his waist and he watched as the last of the sheets were kicked from the bed, lying crumpled on the floor.
Lying crumpled, crumpled, a heap of shadows on the floor and he was suddenly remembering a dark room with blue walls and Elizabeth's laughing smile, laughing eyes, laughing everything - and the fact that the curve of her waist fit his arm so perfectly it hurt to think of it.
Turning over so he faced Mercer he slid his arm around him and though it didn't fit nearly as well, and felt a little awkward, he figured he could make it work and that it was all right. A brief kiss on his forehead and he was asleep dreaming of blissful nothing.
They had a Sunday habit of buying cherries and strolling along the Seine, stopping at the middle point of one of the many bridges that would bring them to the Notre Dame. Pits and stems would be tossed into the dank swirling water beneath, their shoulders would be touching and it would have been the first contact since the silent disentangling of the morning.
“I've come to the full realization that all cities are the same,” Mercer said one morning as he watched the water. Will gave a noncommittal grunt as the older man was in a rare talkative mood and he was loath to interrupt it. “Manchester, Liverpool, Paris, London, Port Royal, Madrid, Vienna, Rome - they're all the same. Dirty.”
“You've been to Madrid?”
“With my father. Years ago.”
“Perhaps its improved since then.”
“I've my gravest doubts,” the smile on his lips was kind so Will pressed his shoulder closer. “I thought at the time it was because I was eye level with the dirt, being young. But it's not changed with height or age. Gotten worse with age, actually.”
“Quite,” a sardonic smile and Mercer gave him a look bespeaking of annoyance but Will knew he was amused.
“How did she die?” It was asked after a long silence, their feet bringing them to the cathedral more out of habit than any real desire.
“Childbirth.”
Silence. Silence till they stopped and Mercer bought him a coffee and Will said thank you and they changed the subject to their neighbor's lover and Mercer's firm conviction that he was a Marquis and that his name was Maurice-Pierre-Antoine de Fontaine.
Will was watching the moon walk across the sky one evening and Mercer was sleeping on his side with his back to him, shirtless with just breeches and no stockings. The younger man rolled over and pulled the other one close, nuzzling the back of his neck. He soon felt Mercer shifting and there were dark eyes in his vision, fingers in his hair, and a warm mouth on his as he was rolled over with a leg gently nudging his thighs apart and he reasoned that this was perhaps not the worst way to forget. To forget the sun, the sand, the water, the air, the hot Caribbean nights, and the cold church bells as cold as the silence and the sound of canons and guns and swords and the sight of ships with a manic grin and the uselessness of the horizon.
Cassiopaya YOU OWE ME MERCER/NORRINGTON NAO. kthnxbai.