No infringement of the following characters and situations is intended.
Warning: Rated [MA] Mature Adults only. Contains strong m/m sexual scenes, violence, coarse language and adult themes.
Hornblower/Highlander Archie/Jack
Archie sat up at the bar, the foam on his pint slowly rising, his blonde hair tucked under a woollen cap.
He toyed with the silver locket in his hands., the pattern worn smooth from constant handling. The tiny portrait inside was faded, and barely did justice to its subject, but what painting ever could? Curled in the other half of the locket was a lock of his lover's hair. He touched the dark strands fondly with a fingertip.
Maybe in a few years time he'd be able to clone his love. He grinned to himself. He remembered the painting of the portrait, like yesterday. Once, there had been another locket to match this one. Once. It had been a lark, a giddy romantic gesture, a keepsake. He snapped it shut and put it away safely, tucked inside his shirt. Plymouth was a long ways south.
He glanced up at the television that flickered in the far corner of the pub. This would have to be his last pint if he didn't want to fall into the harbour on the way home. Not that it mattered. Not that this was home.
He'd been working on the rigs off Aberdeen. Hard work but good money. Now he was doing the low profile thing again, it being time. And Wick was about as low profile as it got. Comfortable, though. He might get some local work, maybe at the glassworks. What he was really thinking of was going to sea again, if he could be sure of the boat. Archie considered himself an indifferent swordsman and he liked to avoid trouble.
Speak of the devil. Thoughts of the sea and his long dead lover were banished as the sense of another twisted inside him. He turned and blinked at the newcomer.
No. His breath caught. Get a grip, he screamed at himself. Don't lose it. Don't lose it. Blackness surged up but he fought it down. Heart racing, Archie stared straight into the face of his own personal nightmare.
His nightmare grinned.
"Oh, this is good. I've been looking for you. Looking for a long time. Jack's missed you, boy."
Archie stood slowly, trying not to shake visibly.
Jack smiled a crocodile smile.
"Outside? My thoughts exactly."
They stepped out into the just dark street, Jack goading him. Archie tried to control the shakes that threatened to paralyse him. God, if he lost it now he really would be dead.
Jack had the weather gauge. All those years of torture gave him a psychological advantage. He was Archie's demon, the living embodiment of all Archie hated about himself. He saw the heavy stone church across the street and darted across, flying onto the steps and touching the heavy wooden door, locked of course, like some game of British Bulldog.
Home. Safe. He sat on the steps, hunched over and head bowed as Jack stood and stalked up and down in the streets, hurling abuse at him, calling him every kind of coward, which he was.
Then Jack realised that there was no invisible line that divided them, and to Archie's horror, the fear twisting itself through his guts in cold slimy needles, Jack mounted the stairs, slowly and deliberately, grinning at him, and sat down beside him.
"What, no kind words for Jack? No welcome?" he taunted. His hand crept along Archie's thigh, and Archie shut his eyes, as though he could pretend Jack wasn't there, when every sense was screaming that he was. No amount of wishing on earth would make him go away, or make him take his hands off Archie. Archie started to bank down into nothingness, feeling nothing. He opened his eyes with a gasp. No, that way lay certain death.
Jack smiled. He knew exactly what he was doing to Archie.
"It's alright, Kennedy," he soothed huskily. "I won't kill you. How could I live without my favourite bum boy?" He grabbed Archie's hand tight, so tight it hurt, and pressed it hard up against his erection.
On the stone steps of the church Archie closed his eyes and gave Jack the blow job of his life, fingering and caressing him, and swallowing when he came.
Jack pulled Archie to his feet, his fist in his hair. "Not bad, Kennedy. But you'll have to do more than that if you want me to spare your miserable life."
He dragged Archie by the hair the few steps to the river, throwing him down onto the stinking, muddy estuary where the river ran into the harbour, jumping down behind him. He struck Archie, sending him down into the mud, on his hands and knees. He kicked him a few times to keep him there, pushed his face deep into the stinking slime, then tore his trousers down while Archie tried to breathe.
The first thrust ripped him up inside. Archie hissed through gritted teeth into the mud as Jack spear him, each push and shove sending a red knife of pain through him. He rocked in the mud, feeling Jack bury himself deep, pounding and grinding faster and faster until Archie was sure Jack was lost to the moment, eyes closed, breathing hard, on the very edge. Archie reached inside his shirt and felt the short flat blade he kept there. Slowly he drew it out, then, waiting to catch Jack on the swing back, struck up, shoving it as hard as he could under Jack's ribs.
Jack reared up in surprise, clutching at the knife, eyes wide in shock.
"You'll pay for that," he promised, blood dribbling from his mouth.
But Archie had scrambled up. He kicked Jack in his exposed and upright genitals, sending him sprawling into the mud, hissing with rage. Archie dived for his sword, where Jack had tossed it, scrabbling for it before Jack could get to his feet. In a wild panic he struck down. And it was done.
Archie sank back onto his knees, waiting for the onslaught. And he screamed as it tore through him and tore him and tried to tear him apart, Jack as cruel in death as in life. And then, like the blowing out of a lantern, it was over. Archie slumped forward, retching up his stout and chips.
Then began the slow, nasty task of dragging Jack's body down into the water and weighting it, of smashing the skull into oblivion so no too clever pathologist could track a two hundred year old murder victim, or murder. How did you explain a crime whose motive's went back hundreds, or even thousands of years, anyway?
He pulled himself up onto the pier and lay there, like washed up seaweed, shivering with cold, inside and out. He would never be free of Jack now. He was inside him, living, laughing. He could feel it. He fought to push him away, to reassert himself. He was Archibald Kennedy and he wasn't a midshipman anymore.
Fingers felt blindly inside his shirt for his talisman, needing comfort, but touched nothing. Terror gripped his heart. He pushed himself to his feet and flopped down over into the estuary again. The sky was already lightening, after only two hours of darkness, and the tide was changing. He crawled on his hands and knees in the filth and refuse, until he caught a small wink of silver in the moonlight. Not daring to breath, dreading another bottle cap, he picked his way over. But there it was, his little locket, half buried in the mud, but spared any lasting damage. He cleaned off the worst of the sticky tidal mud, leaving greybrown smears on the silver, wiping it on the cleaner patches of his clothing. Then he tied the chain in a knot he remembered Finch had taught him, and hung it round his neck once more, hiding it under his shirts and coats, cold and wet against his skin. But a comfort, nevertheless.
He stood, in the pale predawn, covered in mud, blood, cum and vomit, and looked out to sea, the first fishing boats beginning to gurgle to life already, bobbing up and down on the dark harbour water . Time and tide waited for no man, and he thought perhaps it was time to return to the sea.