Post by do on Jul 31, 2009 2:04:32 GMT -5
Alpha Ceti V - Gaia
Stardate: 14.11.69
Six months or so after the battle at Azati Prime
He had gone there looking for the old man, suspecting that if it wasn't this bar, it would be some other.
Jake had already tried the Slain Beasts, hoping to find the guy before Starfleet Security called him and asked him to come get his dad out of the drunk tank again. He went to Ruby's and a fleeter bar at Brasov. Wherever Old Man Mercer had gone to ground, he was hiding well. Entering the Outpost, Jake tried one last time before calling it quits. Hell, if he needed rescuing, he supposed, he could stomach a call from Starfleet. He was on a first name basis with them by now.
Entering the bar, he went to the counter and looked around, searching and saw no one he knew, not immediately.
"Is that him?" Gunnery Sergeant Louis Brennan gave his CO a nudge as she prepared for her shot at the pool table the farthest away from the front door.
"Careful, man," Sloane growled, thinking Brennan was just toying with her. "Is that who?" She looked up and her gaze went where Brennan's thumb casually pointed.
Recognising Captain Jacob 'Mr Happy' Mercer at the bar, Sloane let out a chuckle and went back to her shot. "Wouldn't you like to know..." The wood moved smoothly between her fingers splayed on the green felt and she downed two balls.
"Alright, alright," Louis muttered as he stepped out of the way while she rounded the table for her next shot. "I still think you should go say 'hello'..." Louis nearly ducked, expecting McRae to pick up the cue ball and throw it at him. Instead, she sank another ball and looked up, looking quite pleased with herself. "Well, I'll go then. Say thanks for saving your ass and give you the opportunity to torment me for a few more years."
"You do that and I'll show you torment, Gunny. Or I can demote your ass back to Staff... you've barely broken into the new uniform."
Jake was about to leave when he noted a familiar face (alright ass) leaning over the pool table. It was Wilma, he thought with an inward grin. They hadn't seen each other since that little adventure on Azati Prime and sure enough once they'd gotten back to Enterprise, Jake was deployed elsewhere and hadn't had the opportunity to see the woman since.
Deciding it would be rude if he didn't actually say hello, Jake supposed it couldn't be any worse then trying to drag his father home from the drunk.
Walking over to her and her partner, a MACO from Enterprise, he gathered, Jake greeted shortly. "Who's winning?"
Louis nearly choked on his beer when he turned to see who had spoken but managed a nod to the Captain. This, he had to see.
Sloane closed her eyes a moment, surprised she'd recognise his voice that instantly. Straightening up, she turned around and her hand let the butt of the cue slide down to the floor. "That would be me." She gave Mercer a smile - one that turned out rather genuine too, leaving out the smartass sass Brennan and others were often on the receiving end of.
"How have you been?" She realised she had made sure to not pay too much attention to where he'd been transferred to.
"The same," he said, catching a waitress' eye and gesturing for her to bring a beer. What the hell. Might as well be sociable right? "You?"
She looked better cleaned up and he wondered fleetingly if she still wore the same perfume as she did on Azati. If it wouldn't get a pool cue jammed up his ass, he'd risk taking a whiff but suspected the liberties he was allowed to take then did not extend to their current venue.
"Ever the talking type." She smiled again. Same old, same old. Having noted his wordless conversation with one of the waitresses, Sloane and Brennan got one of their own. She glanced at the Gunny and the guy seemed to jump into action.
"Let me get that one for you, Sir," Louis told Mercer. "We were about to get another round for ourselves anyway." With an amused look at McRae, he went for the bar, getting scarce - as ordered.
Sloane followed Brennan for a second before her gaze settled back on the Captain. "It's been slow but then I needed the time to get rid of that damn smell," she joked. "You seemed to have managed fine." She didn't try to hide the appraising look she gave his well-worn jeans or the black t-shirt that stretched across his broad shoulders just so. But then again she wasn't blatantly being flirty either. This all stemmed from the 'fun' they'd had in that damn cave and the curiosity of the before and after looks. Right. Really.
"Well, not all of it was bad," he said, leaning over to the pool table and examining the spread of coloured balls. His eyes shifted to hers just slightly and there was humour in them even if it did not correspond on the rest of his face. "Who's the Gunny buying the drinks?" Jake told himself he was asking because it was polite to know who was buying you a round but there might be another reason to.
One that he wasn't going to cop to.
Seeing that spark in his eyes, Sloane actually had to drop her gaze to the floor or he was going to have her bloody blushing. No, it hadn't been all that bad.
"Er..." Like she was snapping from a daze, she hesitated at her earlier faux-pas. "Sorry about that. I should have introduced the two of you. Spanking new Gunny Louis Brennan." Pride laced her tone as the two had served together through hell and back for well over a decade. He was a good NCO. And he was a mate.
Judging by the way she made the introduction, it was obvious that there wasn't anything between them and the sensation that engendered in Jake was one that surprised him more than the original inquiry and that was - relief. The guy seemed much too... nice for a woman like her. Although, since when he became the expert in that, Jake wanted to fucking know.
"It's fine," he shrugged. "Give you a round," he glanced at the pool table, "but I'm sure Yuskovski would be pissed if I screwed up his table. Poker is my game," he told her, exceeding his vocabulary quota for the day.
Chuckling, Sloane nodded. "Yeah, the man can be quite protective," she commented, brushing some imaginary dust off the side of the table as the music pumped through the speakers around the place, making the crowd bob along the beat whether they realised it or not.
Funnily, Sloane was downright glad. Another pool shark would have made her walk right out, probably. She'd been down that road with another MACO. Still had the bruises to prove it. That and Fabien loaded his old twelve-gauge every time she approached one of his tables. Not that she was even thinking of Mercer in that way. F-ing no. But everybody played poker.
"You any good?" She spied Brennan heading back with the beer bottles over Mercer's shoulder. The Gunny had stayed away as plausibly long as he could. Dick. But that made her grin and she'd get him for it later.
"I hold my own," Jake replied, leaning against the table and giving the Gunny a nod on approach with beer. In truth, Jake was pretty good, in fact, there was a rule about the Farragut that you didn't play Captain Mercer if you wanted to keep your money.
Giving him a look, she shook her head. "Huh-huh. Something tells me you do better than that." Call it freaking instincts. There was also that chatter around her ship. "I can still hear the men moaning about it on the NX." She gave him that and a wink before she turned to Brennan.
"Thanks, mate." Taking a bottle from the Gunny, she waited for him to hand one to Mercer before clinging their bottles by habit. She brought the bottle to her lips and drank, her eyes going back to the table.
"Mind if we finish this one?" Other interested parties had started to circle the table since there had been a visible lack of activity. Not that anyone would come and challenge McRae for it. (No one was that drunk enough yet.) In fact, ever since Rickman, there wasn't much action on that front anymore. But Hunter, barman and current manager of this here fine establishment in Yuskovski's absence, was getting better and better. Refusing to let Derick enter her thoughts anymore than she already had, she put her beer down and picked up her cue.
Jake tossed the interlopers a look, not a threatening stare by any means, just one of those intense stares that said quite clearly 'go away' and they seemed to fall away like leaves on a tree. Taking a sip of his beer, he shifted his eyes to the door, just in case the old man decided to show up.
Setting up for her shot, Sloane watched the dynamics between Mercer and the other patrons with interest. There was something innately ominous about him. And he seemed strung up tighter than a goddamn piano wire. Just under the surface. Catching his quick look toward the door, she asked, "Waiting for someone?"
Hey, maybe the guy had a girl even though he'd told her in no uncertain terms that he didn't play the field. He supposedly liked to pay for them but Sloane knew for a fact that the only molls Seth would allow in tonight were his and they were already working the floor. And that applied whether the main man was in town or not.
Shifting over to her a little because he didn't want everyone to know his business and they had touched on the subject in Azati, Jake answered simply, "Just keeping an eye out for the old man."
If there was a God (who the hell was he kidding?), Isaiah Mercer was at home sleeping it off in his own puke. If not, he was sleeping it off somewhere else, causing someone some grief.
It was like a light bulb flashing in her head. Old man. Mercer. Old Man Mercer. Shit. "He's your dad?" The words tumbled out quietly and without much finesse and she was kicking herself for it. Jake Mercer had 'private man' written all over him. She knew plenty about drunkards and the mess they left behind them through Tom, Derick and Julian to know it all came with incredible shame as well. She met his eyes, her gaze apologetic.
Jake straightened up and shot her a look. "You know him," he said simply. Great, what did the old bastard do to her of all people?
"Seen him around at Fabien's." The man was practically a fixture there. Not that she would tell Jake that. Or comment on how many times she'd seen Guy pick up the poor man off the floor. Mercer already knew this. Obviously. Is that what his nights were like when he was on leave... walking around town, trying to find his father before he got into serious shit? She studied his face for a second then positioned herself for her shot. She sank two more balls and heard Brennan groan at the other end of the table. Game over.
"Tonight?" Jake asked. He had checked Fabien's earlier. Had he missed the man. He knew that his dad like to shoot the shit with Fabien, since they were old MACO war dogs but Fabien hadn't seen him tonight, or so he told Jake.
"No," Sloane quickly said when she realised how he'd taken her words. "Not tonight. I meant... usually."
"He gets around." Jake frowned unhappily. With a resigned sigh, he gave up trying to track down his errant father. Tonight, he just didn't have the fucking patience for it, particularly now that he was aware Wilma had seen him frequently. "He'll show up. He always does."
He took a deeper swig down his throat, anger building a little at the man he remembered before Earth, before Ely and Joey died and took the best of his father with them. Sometimes, Jake wished he hadn't found Isaiah here, that he had died on Earth with the others.
She bet he did. She nodded at his words, figuring there wasn't much she could say to that. She remembered Old Man Mercer as far back as she could. That meant he'd come with the exodus, the first ships to set a home here. Again her brain suddenly fired and she put two and two together: that the Captain had only recently found his father. You'd think a miracle like that would have snapped Mercer Senior out of it. But some had lost just too much.
Sloane looked around and nodded to a couple of blokes on the sidelines, slipping the cue on the table carefully. She spied Brennan still on the other side of the table talking with other folks and, catching his eye, he paused and caught up, handing in his cue as well.
She didn't comment on his dad's situation and Jake was grateful for that. The last thing he needed to do right now was rehash that charming bit of history to an audience. Noticing that she was done with the game, he stepped away from the table, permission granted to the onlookers waiting to play.
Soon Louis was walking back to them to bid them goodnight. "I better head home. 'Night, Colonel."
"She really got you on a tight leash..." Sloane teased him. She would apologise to Brennan tomorrow for ditching him like that.
"Not going there with you," Louis deflected before giving Mercer a measuring look. Maybe the Captain could catch her and draw her in like his soul mate had done him. 'Right. Fat chance of that,' Louis thought ruefully. He had pegged Rickman to be the one and look how that had turned out.
"It was nice to meet you, Sir."
Jake didn't respond with a word but tipped his bottle in the direction of the departing man, with a slight nod to indicate his acknowledgment.
Once the guy was gone, he drifted a little closer to the Lt. Colonel. "Drink?" He asked, offering to buy her one.
She greeted him with a look full of mock surprise. So much for the non-dating type. Not that this was a 'date' per se... but she found it amusing nonetheless, asking for some teasing. Thing was, she wasn't sure he could take it. The man definitely had a sense of humour though. She'd had a taste of it. And piercing blue eyes. She cleared her throat.
"Sure." Eyes still full of mischief, she motioned to the bar and then the tables and booths beyond, letting him choose which he preferred.
It was way too long since he had done this. Way too long. A distant memory told him tables and booths sounded very much like the date they had joked about and this wasn't a date. This was a drink. Jake had sense enough not to blur those lines, especially by someone who outranked him. Instead, he led her to the counter and leaned up against it, gesturing at Hunter wordlessly to bring the lady whatever she was drinking.
"Bryce," Sloane greeted the younger man. "Just another one of these." She waved her bottle and turned to Mercer, studying his profile. His jaw was set... she guessed something bothered him. Either that or he was nervous. Nah. The man didn't strike her as the nervous type. Wound tight, yes, but not anxious over having a beer in a bar. With a girl. On the receiving end of his silent treatment once again, Sloane found herself wishing Brennan had stuck around a little longer. Mercer had been chattier then.
"You okay?" Maybe he was waiting for an opportunity to excuse himself to go check on his father...
"Yeah," he said quickly, brushing off any possibility that this was about his hang ups. He liked her more than most. "So how you been?" He finally asked, trying to remember how this was done. Having a conversation with a person that wasn't essential for the mission. On the island with her, it's the most he had spoken to anyone about anything in a long time. Oh he talked to the squad but that was different, that was necessity. This... this wasn't.
"I..." Sloane suddenly had the impression he was trying. That he wasn't good at this but was really trying. It pleased her that he'd make the effort for reasons she didn't want to investigate right now. She smiled a little, trying to make eye contact. "Just been trying to take it easy. Leave don't come often and never for very long." Not for the head of the Grifters but she guessed he already knew that. "Got a couple of days off so trying to make the most of it." Yeah. Bar, pool, beer. She had so much in her life... well, she had Lexie and Tom and, in the last few months, they had been pretty much all she had cared about outside the job. "You? Off as well or do you get to come home every night?"
"Just came back from Coridan," Jake replied, meeting her gaze, liking the smile. It softened her features and once again, he had to blink because Battle Bitch was a woman under all that grit. As if that maddening scent hadn't given it away already, an inner voice pointed out rather snidely in his head. "Your old stomping grounds." Yeah, he knew that McRae had led a Gryphon Squadron to the planet a few years back and taken it from pirates. Not only had the liberation of the satellite incurred its piecemeal colony's gratitude but they had asked to become a protectorate of Gaia and was now officially part of the Gaian Territories. "I saw your statue," he said with a straight face.
Thinking on Coridan, Sloane started to nod when the rest of what Mercer said made her do a double take. She turned to him sharply and then caught on. Finally. "Ass." She grinned. God, the embarrassment if the people there ever lost their mind and did that!
He didn't grin but a slight smirk crossed his features a bit and her double take allowed him to be on a bit more equal footing since he felt as awkward as all hell. "Some raiders tried to return to Coridan. They didn't get the memo about the change in management."
There was a time when he was good at this, very good in fact. It was different talking to women he paid for because well there wasn't much preamble before you got down to business. This small talk stuff, it was fucking hard. "So any action down here?"
Sloane had seen the reports on Coridan in the last week. She hadn't realised Mercer had been among the MACO sent there to deal with the situation.
"Nothing except boozing and brawls," she quipped. "Actually, been off Enterprise recently, training new pilots. Azati Prime cost us." Her mood shifting to serious, she looked at him, trying to backtrack from that slippy slide. His handsome face sure helped steer clear from another pity party on account of the human race's fate.
Using peanuts as an excuse to lean toward him, Sloane checked something she'd wanted to check ever since he'd come to say hello. Reaching out, she grabbed the bowl of nuts and sat back down, smiling. He did... smell just as good.
Damn... there it was again. When she leaned forward, he felt his lungs fill with that subtle scent that could overpower booze, smoke and beer nuts, it seemed. He'd paid for expensive whores and none of them smelled as good as her. Clearing his throat, he took another swig of beer and replied, "People die. Those are the rules."
She noted how he didn't pull back and let her invade his space. She would have made a comment about it, about how she found it difficult to find the lines they shouldn't cross now that they were out of that cave and out of decon. They had crossed them so easily that day. But his next words stopped her. "I know." They certainly followed those rules down to a tee. But sometimes, just sometimes, they got away with cheating death. She and Mercer sure had.
Taking another sip from her beer, she fiddled with the bottle a bit, scratching at the label the condensation was already helping peel off, before she looked at him again, and then actually turned toward him.
He didn't move, watching her play, aware that there was something going on between them. The air was pregnant with it. Fleetingly, he recalled how it felt to hear her breathing, her heat against his skin, he wondered whether her lips were as soft as the rest of her, whether those eyes saw as much as they seemed to at times. He wanted to say things and all he could manage was, "You still smell nice."
That stole her breath away. Her mouth opened but no sound came out. She canted her head to the side, eyes on his, and lifted her hand toward him... hesitated, lowered it and then lifted it again until the back of her fingers made contact with the side of his face. Brushing against his cheekbone, down and along his jaw line, her hand finished on his shoulder as she broke into a smile. "I was just gonna say that."
Her touch had his full attention and he watched her fingers, slender things that were as comfortable gliding across skin as they were assembling a weapon. "What now?" He asked, because after this point, he was just as puzzled as she by their situation.
Damned if she knew. Sloane hadn't set out for this... hadn't anticipated it. But she couldn't ignore it. Didn't want to. Whatever this was, it had her on the edge of her seat, open, wanting. And it scared her a little too.
She squeezed his shoulder almost by reflex or comfort for the confusion she felt mirrored in his eyes and decidedly loathed the idea of pulling her hand back. So she left it there. Her fingers went to play with the collar of his t-shirt and beyond, finding the pulse at his neck. She remembered burying her face there and she tried to blink those memories and the sensations attached to them away.
It had been so very long since he allowed himself to be swept away by the moment. Twelve years ago, he woke up in a hospital ship and learnt that everyone who ever meant anything to him was dead. His father, his brothers, the girlfriend who still traded letters with him even though they knew it wasn't going anywhere, the guys he used to hang out with in Carson City, where he had grown up. Everyone he ever knew before he join the Corps was gone.
Over the next twelve years the losses mounted, fighting Xindi, trying to establish some kind of understanding with the Romulans and even just fighting off the scavengers who always hung around to pick at a corpse, that's what he had to face. Comrades always dying, until their faces became blurred and he barely remembered who they were any more. It burned into him, crushed the person he was, left this wreckage behind. The safer route was just to simply accept that living to the next day was the best that could be managed.
And then he found out the old man was still alive and for a moment, just one fucking moment he thought maybe, maybe it wasn't so bad being a survivor. Until he actually stood face to face with Isaiah Mercer and realized that he should have clung to the memory of the man because the reality of him was worse than dead.
Like now.
His eyes shifted away from the Colonel because the old man stumbled through the door. Judging by the look of him, he was past the point of having one more drink.
"Jay!" His father called out loudly and staggered forward, arm outstretched, grinning. "What the fuck are you doing here, boy?"
Jake's eyes met Sloane's fleetingly and conveyed a silent apology before he let out a heavy sigh and whatever had been going on between them evaporated like dust in the wind. He shifted his face just enough to press into her palm in a parting gesture before standing up to go deal with his drunk of a father.
Sloane let her hand drift down as she watched Mercer stand with a heavy gait. She could tell him it was okay, which it was clear he really wouldn't feel that it was. She could offer him help she guessed he wouldn't want or she could do this. Take a leap.
"I'm planning to be in Eden Park in the morning. Blanket, book, brunch..." she let the offer hang for a second as she met his gaze, a smirk appearing on her face. "Maybe a ball or a Frisbee..."
No pressure. Hell, maybe that wasn't his idea of relaxation. Too mundane or domesticated or downright bloody sad.
For a moment, Jake paused, surprised by the offer and then somewhat at a loss at what to say. Yeah, he was going to be about for another few days and chances were he'd be nursemaiding his father all-night, which would make him charming company.
"I might come around," he said as he shifted his gaze to his father, who was making a beeline for the counter. He caught Hunter's gaze and shook his head, an indication that Old Man Mercer was done for the night. "I... gotta go." He looked at her.
"Sure." She hoped her gaze conveyed understanding and not pity. She didn't think Mercer would take well to that. The earlier moment gone, the space between them seemed to fill with awkwardness. She picked up her bottle of beer. "Thanks for this."
"You can buy the next one," he replied, almost smiling but not quite before heading off to deal with his father before Hunter tossed him out.
Deal. Sloane nodded, noting that expression Mercer seemed to reserve for her. 'Yeah, I'll get the next one. And maybe the one after that,' she thought, amused... thrilled.
She went back to her beer, trying not to stare as the Captain escorted his father out, trying to ignore the bitching and nasty remarks the old man dished out.
Sloane focused instead on tomorrow morning. On the invite she'd put on the table. She tried to reason she was going to go anyway, that it was in her plans to begin with. If he showed up, he showed up; if he didn't, she'd just do that lying down thing on a blanket, looking at the (hopefully) blue sky above. Relax. It was the Quinn brothers who had showed her how to do this again. Jared first but also Mike, eventually. But while she drank her beer and told herself she'd be doing this for herself without ceremony, she also knew she'd be spending the night planning what food she'd bring. She'd try to guess what he liked to drink. Shit. She'd plan everything all the way down to the bloody pattern on the picnic blanket.
.. continues in 'Out of Practice'.