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“The house in Cornwall belonged to a friend of Mori’s who, until Christmas, Thaniel had been pretty sure was imaginary. In his experience only imaginary people disappeared to Peru for ten years, but it turned out that Merrick Tremayne did as well. He’d turned up suddenly, perfectly real, with tattoos, a Bristol accent, and an open invitation to South America. Thaniel liked that idea.”
- The Lost Future of Pepperharrow, Chapter 48
Thaniel hears the kitchen door open first, before the steady knocking noise of boots on the low bench set beside it. It’s muddy outside, even though it’s cold and the ground is mostly frozen. With everyone tramping in and out, though, the ground leading to the kitchen door of this tired Cornish house has softened. Thaniel has been taking to kicking his boots clean whenever he walks into the house, too. He’d hate to track dirt through to the kitchen.
Right now, he is focusing on something singularly more important, which is his tea. There’s a stock of green in the cupboard for when Keita is home, but plenty of Lipton, too.
“You’re back early,” Thaniel calls over his shoulder, not really meaning anything by it. It’s a habitual greeting of sorts; a hangup from London. Oftentimes it was a reminder that Keita might have known when Thaniel was on his way back far sooner than he’d planned, but that knack didn’t go both ways – although that isn’t really something they need to think about anymore.
“Am I?” a low voice replies.
Thaniel blinks. He’s startled, but tries not to show it – except inevitably, it becomes more than obvious. He turns to see a man, very obviously not Keita, looking back at him with amusement tracing the laughter-lines by his eyes. He is definitely not Keita. Far too tall, although Thaniel is still taller. The man has hair that was likely once sandy-blond, although it’s gone grey with age.
“I would have thought ten years is rather late for tea,” the man continues easily. His voice swirls dark purple, utterly different to Keita’s gold words.
All Thaniel thinks in a flash of mortified understanding is, you are in your slippers making tea in this man’s house.
As it turns out, Merrick Tremayne is not a fanciful tale. He is apparently a very real man with mud on his boots and a satchel stuffed with what Thaniel can only assume to be a lot of equally fanciful things. It looks painfully heavy, but he doesn’t seem bothered by the weight. In truth, it doesn’t seem like he finds the bag heavy at all. He just smiles at Thaniel, with the echoes of his round, purple-looking vowels still in the winter air between them.
“Is there enough water for a second cup?” he asks jovially, when Thaniel continues to wordlessly stare at him.
So Thaniel makes him tea.
He now has the singularly strange feeling that accompanies being alone with a man he hadn’t thought to be real – or at the very least, not still alive. He’s on a trip to Peru to see a friend, Keita told him; ten years, I wrote down.
And how do you know a man with friends in Peru? Thaniel asked in return, although he probably didn’t have to. How did Keita know anyone? The magic manipulations of time, he supposed.
The answer came anyway: I pushed him in front of a shell at the bombing of Canton.
Thaniel had laughed, endlessly awed and endeared with this man and his mind, and hadn’t really believed him. He’d had doubts and queries and a well of fondness that would never run dry, lying in a soft bed in a quiet Cornish house with someone that knew, once, just how badly he would need it. Thaniel rolled a little closer and offered the cover of his arm, which Keita gladly took and settled beneath. There were no prying eyes here, and no one to hide from. Just them, and one shared bed.
Now Thaniel sets the mug down gently on the wood table beside the place Merrick has chosen to sit. He’s set all his things on the floor, and folded up his sleeves with a messy and haphazard sort of attention. Thaniel tries not to stare too long at his arms. They’re strong but lean, with a few cord-thin scars and a surprising amount of ink. There’s an anchor on the tan skin of his forearm. Thaniel looks away.
“Do you mind?” Merrick says, gesturing to his leg. Thaniel blinks, unsure what he means. He shakes his head anyway, certain that he won’t mind whatever it is this man ends up doing.
As it turns out, the answer is rolling up the leg of his loose trousers. Thaniel tries to keep the instinctive raise of his eyebrow subtle, but isn’t sure he manages. Everything about this situation is making him feel a bit too British. He doesn’t manage to hide it, either; that becomes plenty clear.
“I’m afraid I’m awfully used to sailors,” Merrick says, “which doesn’t often lend itself to modesty.”
Thaniel shakes his head again, just briefly, trying not to watch with too much open curiosity. He looks down at his own tea until Merrick sets something onto the table between them. Then Thaniel’s curiosity reaches its limit. He leans forward, squinting at the ring of engraved wood. He can feel Merrick appraising him.
“It digs into my leg after a while,” he offers. Thaniel raises an eyebrow, still wondering what it is— until Merrick explains; “It’s a mobility aid, of sorts. I had quite a bad time in Canton.” He clicks his tongue. “Mind you, I’m not sure where I left my cane before leaving Truro the first time, so this is the only help I have with me.”
“I think I saw a cane in one of the closets,” Thaniel offers. Six had decided without any consultation that she ought to have her own space separate to the bedrooms, and no the drawing room wouldn’t do, she must have that closet: not the one on the upper floors. Thaniel thought – and still thinks – that such a statement was all well and good, although he did make his way into her closet at least once to check there weren’t any hedgehogs hidden away in the warm corners. He hadn’t found hedgehogs; he had, however, found what now makes sense as a spare cane. “I can get it for you in a moment, if you like.”
Merrick gives him a smile. “I have to assume you’re a friend of Keita’s or Minna’s,” he says. “I hope so, at least. I’d rather keep you for Christmas dinner, and not need to have you arrested for burglary.”
Thaniel laughs, a little bit more settled now than he had been a moment ago. “A friend of– Keita’s.”
But he hesitates just a touch too long. He’s possibly confused by the fact Merrick called him Keita first; possibly still drunk on the fact he’s been calling him that for months now, held in quiet, sunshiney whispers of each new day. Morning, Keita, whispered quietly with dustmotes in the air, waiting for him to smile and shift and say morning, Thaniel, right back. It gives him a headrush every time, and he really likes it.
Merrick picks up on it with unsettling quickness. He raises an eyebrow, looking Thaniel up and down. “And is he still funny about names?”
It isn’t accusatory, but Thaniel flushes all the same, face turning an undeniable lily pink. Not with shame, nor with nerves. With the fact he’s been caught out, he thinks, but there’s still none of the fear he’s used to burning low at the back of his throat. He thinks back on what Keita has told him of Merrick before, what he wrote off as a tale, and starts to suspect that he doesn’t need to be afraid.
“He’s… particular,” Thaniel says, attempting to be tactful.
Merrick’s grin grows. “And I trust his taste for company, as eclectic as it might be.”
Thaniel laughs again, far more settled. He can tell now that Merrick won’t ask questions; he won’t do more than gently tease. It makes him wonder about his Peruvian friend, but Merrick has done him the courtesy of avoiding prying questions. Thaniel can do the same.
“Truthfully,” Thaniel admits, “I didn’t think you were real.”
Merrick gives him a fond smile. “I’m plenty real, and unsurprised Keita suggested differently.”
“It was more the fact you’ve been somewhere in the Peruvian Andes for over a decade,” Thaniel admits. When Merrick laughs again, it’s a bright sound laced with delight, and Thaniel smiles in the way one must when other people’s laughter is contagious.
“You should visit,” he offers. “Any time you like, there’s a nice village up in the mountains and a bed with your name on it. I’ll teach you Quechua.”
Thaniel can’t say he minds the thought.
The morning grows around the two of them, easy and natural. It’s calm and easy, like most Christmasses are, although there are still a couple of days till Christmas Eve. Thaniel puts more wood on the stove fire, and makes them both more tea as the need arises. He offers out the last of the cinnamon buns he made with Six. In return Merrick pulls a round tin out of his satchel, old and faded and still full of rich dark chocolates. Thaniel must admit that they taste bloody fantastic.
He’s sitting at the kitchen table with his second cup of tea long empty when he hears the door again. One more he hears the sound of boots knocking against the bench, but this time there’s the low chattering voices, too.
Six come through to the kitchen first first, eyes landing straight on Merrick. She stops just past the doorway, evidently displeased with this surprise. Keita’s missing habit for preempting anything that might have been a stress isn’t something she’s quite adjusted to, although Thaniel sees her try very hard to manage in the meantime. She’s clever enough to see that this isn’t easy for him, and has always been awfully empathetic.
“Hello, petal,” Thaniel says. She glances at him briefly, then goes back to staring at this new person taking up the seat she has claimed as her own each breakfast. “This is Mister Tremayne,” Thaniel adds.
“Merrick,” he corrects. “Christ, you make me feel old.”
“Because you are,” a golden voice says.
Thaniel glances back to the door in time to see Keita come through and stand behind Six. He’s already evidently pleased by their company. Once, years ago, he may have had a memory of this very moment, but Thaniel knows he’s stopped looking at his old journals lately. He takes the future as it comes to him: an inevitable surprise.
“Keita,” Merrick says fondly. Keita smiles. Thaniel imagines Merrick wants to get up and clap him on the back the way sailors are wont to do, but his leg band isn’t on and Keita would despise it. “This is why you came to England?”
“It certainly wasn’t for the tea,” Keita replies.
Merrick laughs, still terribly pleased. There’s love, of a sort, in the way he smiles across the room. Thaniel wonders why on earth Keita pushed him in front of a bomb.
“Merrick is a friend,” Keita tells Six, leaning forward to speak directly to her, “and this is his house. It would be rude to kick him out.”
Thaniel sees her nod, seeming willing to accept this — although her trust remains to be granted. Merrick doesn’t seem bothered by it. “I have a bag full of things for you to make something strange with,” he tells Keita. “Whitewood and pollen, mostly.”
Keita tips his head in thanks. It’s obvious to anyone looking how pleased he is to see Merrick again, to be here. Thaniel sees the novelty of a surprise still dancing across his face, too, and falls a little bit more in love with him. It’s awfully hard not to.
“Now,” Merrick says, glancing at Six, “I was told there was a stash of holiday sweets in the parlour. Would you like to help me bring my share from Peru upstairs? I’ll let you have some chocolate if you hold the tin.”
“Mori has said I should be wary of strange old men offering me things around Christmas,” she replies. Thaniel watches Merrick blinking, taking everything about Six in with something between confusion and delight on his face.
“Well, I suppose that’s awfully good advice,” he replies.
“You can go with him,” Keita says, nudging the back of her head gently. “Get him the cane from your closet first.”
She nods, not seeming inclined to wait longer than necessary in the kitchen. Thaniel watches her move at pace across the kitchen floor, knowing she’ll likely wait at the top of the stairs for Merrick to join her anyway. When he looks back at Merrick he sees a tender smile on his face, and wonders if there’s someone in particular he’s missing.
Thaniel stands to clear their mugs while Merrick fits the wooden ring back around his leg. Then he stands, looking between Thaniel and Keita with something indescribably pleased in his eyes. “Best be off to make sure your little girl doesn’t fall through a hole in these old floors,” he says.
“She won’t,” Keita replies, with some of the assurance Thaniel has missed hearing from him. “She’s far too sensible for that.”
“It really is good to see you again,” Merrick replies. His blue eyes crinkle when he smiles. They cut to Thaniel, but he continues speaking to Keita when he adds, “And it’s wonderful to meet Mister Steepleton. God only knows how you found someone patient enough to start a family with you.”
“Thaniel is hardly patient,” Keita murmurs.
Thaniel elbows him gently in the side, not hard, just for Keita to use it as an excuse to grab his arm and, very briefly, pull him close. Merrick’s eyes soften at the sight of it, making Thaniel all the more curious. He doesn’t ask, though; he doesn’t feel like he needs to.
Merrick shuts the door behind himself with a very quiet — and very pointed — click. It keeps the kitchen warm, which is needed. Thaniel can see snow falling through the window, and has no doubt that the Cornish air outside is fresh and clear and brisk. There’s a chill. It’s better than smog, Thaniel thinks, and that’s more than enough.
“I had no way of knowing he would join us,” Keita quietly murmurs. It makes Thaniel laugh, joyously so. He wraps an arm around the man at his side, feeling him warm and present and there.
“No,” he replies, “I suppose you didn’t.”
He tightens his arm just a little bit around Keita’s shoulders, tugging him near and relishing in the feeling of his frame pressed against his chest. Thaniel still isn’t quite used to the feeling of another man’s body this close to his own, although he thinks that by now – it’s been years – he ought to be. There’s still a breathless novelty with it, though. This is something he can have.
Love, he thinks, this is love.
He knows it to be true, more than pleased to have the privilege of loving Keita Mori.