ghost story part 1/?

fucking plot bunnies!
I can’t finish anything, evidently, but I can start new things galore. I think this could be gorgeous, though, and- maybe publishable. Therefore, I am posting it f-locked. Please, please don’t let me quit on this!

Title; none yet- working title is Wilmot’s Ghost
rating NC-17
warnings- ghost sex, monograph fondling (explicit m/m sex later)
Disclaimers; Wilmot is an historical personage and I don’t actually know how his ghost would behave. Any Historic Documents quoted, economic theories bruited, or library methodologies described are strictly out of my butt and probably do not exist in any way at all.

Milord- Christ, please- let me- He is floating, throbbing, there are hands brushing like spiderwebs across goosefleshed skin- oh let me, let me Johnny, oh please-

Should I then? Must I? What will you do for’t? A head raises, spilling long, extravagantly disheveled hair. Shadowed eyes glitter, a mouth like a kiss is pursed in mockery.

Anything, I swear, anything- Aah, whoreson bastard your mouth- no don’t take it away-

Do this for me then- The soft voice is receding; Make me live again, let them know who I was, who I am, and oh put your hand to yourself, Jack, for you’re too near waking and I can’t reach you now-

His own swift, sure strokes twist his mouth into a silent yell. Ageless eyes are fixed upon his, a whispering sigh of longing echoes down the tunnel of many years.

*********

Jack drew a shuddering breath. The morning hour was still dark; he thumped the alarm in the moment it began to ring, with the heel of his hand- his palm was covered with his own slime.

“Jesus Christ.” He shut his eyes again. His fingertips played with the mess in his hand, and thence slid into his mouth. He became two people- one sucking greedily at the intrusion, the other thrilling at the swirling lapping tongue. -Make me live again, Jack-

The voice was tiny, but as clear as if it were in the room with him. Jack’s eyes snapped open, for good this time. He heaved himself out of bed and shuffled into the bathroom, turned the light on, thought better of it, and opened the shower taps in the gloom. He turned his face into the hot water, and sluiced away the sticky residue of his dream.

The rest of the morning was routine; jeans, teeshirt, comb through wet hair, ponytail, step into battered sneakers, search out glasses, shove laptop into briefcase, sling it over shoulder. Jack stepped out onto the grey wet street and jogged down the block to the diner where he took the morning shift, and dealt with the immediacies of menus, thick coffee mugs, and eggs over easy.

Jack enjoyed this part-time job. There was a sense of camaraderie each morning, while so many disparate people contentedly ate, slurped coffee. Someone got up at the counter, someone sat down. Jack hastened over to set down a cup of coffee and remove the debris, took the order for the house special, noted red hair and a rainbow chain around the neck as his marker. Leaning against the door for a moment, he swept the room with a mild sense of satisfaction. The room was made warm and welcoming by the incandescent lights, yellow against the grey in the rainy windows. His gaze fell, idly, on the red-haired man he had just served, who was eating quickly and intently. His battered knuckles protruded from the sleeves of his bike jacket, the coppery hairs glinting warmly against freckled skin. His eyes, downcast, showed long russet lashes against his cheekbones, and when he glanced up and around, the bright blue was startling. Jack caught a gesture across the room and brought two checks to a party of four.

“I’m making good progress now,” he told his advisor later that afternoon. “Pepys’ earliest accounting processes show a definite relationship to the standards that were common in the day, and those were based on ecclesiastic dogma. The evolution is quite striking, even within his own lifetime. Theosophical thought as applied to monies made an inaccurate system, to say the least, and from there I can extrapolate the rising dominance of real banking techniques as we know them today….”

“Jack,” his teacher interrupted; “If I can poke my nose into your business, you have made entirely too much progress this semester.”

“Excuse me?” Jack said in some shock. “I’ve barely scraped the surface- the university has gotten me some original letters to look at, and the photocopies of the books from the British Museum haven’t arrived- ”

“No, no, you misunderstand me, son,” the professor interrupted. “I mean that you have been spending entirely too much time in the stacks. You’ve lost weight, and you’re getting pale… It’s part of my job as well, Jack,” he added. “I have to make sure you survive your thesis while you accomplish it- the university hates to make those enormous death settlements… Please tell me you’ll start some program of exercise, will you?”

“Well, not today,” Jack retorted. “Real letters, sir, in the actual hands of Charles Sackville, and John Wilmot…” -please Johnny, let me oh-

“Jack?”

Jack swallowed, and looked up. “I only have two days with the monographs, and then I’ll take some time off, I promise.” he said over his pounding heart. It was difficult to stand while covering his groin with his briefcase, and likewise to shake handsin any natural fashion.

He stopped outside the office, and concentrated on breathing normally. Hell of an imagination he reflected wryly. He shifted his heavy briefcase to a more comfortable position and set off across campus towards the big library building. The rain had let up and big clouds scudded across blue skies. It was beautiful, as if he were seeing everything with new eyes; the campus buildings in all their disparate architecture seemed, each one, to be profound somehow. And he both did- and didn’t- want to go into the library, take the elevator into the fourth floor stacks.

” Markham… Jack…” The guardian of the monograph section never seemed to remember him. Her finger lagged along the lines in her book, looking for his entry. Jack smiled with barely controlled patience. It was all too easy to affront this Chiron, and there was no other entrance. But now that he was in the building, the papers called to him, and his fingers itched to open the red leather portfolio that held such inestimable treasure. He was through the gate before she had it completely open. Smiling his thanks, and then turned his attention to the narrow corridors and his desk.

The library page brought the cart to his side, laden with the books he’d been using. And there on top was the red folder. Jack picked it up with trembling hands, and drew on a pair of white cotton gloves before he opened it- and found himself pausing, looking at the attendant quizzically. “Please, step away.” he told her. “This is… rather emotional.”

The woman smiled. “I certainly imagine it is!” she said. “I’ll be back at the end of the day, enjoy!”

Jack turned his attention back to the red leather. Slowly, he picked up an edge, lifted it and laid it aside. There were three pages within, heavy hand-laid paper, brown with age, written upon with brown oak-gall ink. His gloved hands lifted the top one, laid it on the green blotter under the work light. His breath hissed between his teeth, and he simply looked. Four hundred years ago, a man, quick, and clever, had touched pen to paper and left something of himself there. He bent himself to the task of reading the faded, looping letters;

“To Sir Charles Sedley, Sir it is my great grief that I have not witnessed your triumph on the stage previous for I now know that my life has been less complete up till this date…”

Jack grinned at the wit that sprang forth as fresh as the day it was written. Although- he mused- his tenure in the dry stacks might have desiccated his own nature till the mildest of jests seemed revelatory. But, no. Sackeville was a man of humor.

“In the matter of the purse of which you wot, I wish it be passed on to my agent in London tht he might…”

That was the meat, the reason this page had been passed on to him. Jack made his notations on his laptop, added one more shred of evidence to his theory. But he read the whole letter once more, smiling as if it were from a beloved friend. How extraordinary! He laid the sheet once more into its protective carapace, and gently took out the next.

To The Right Honorable Dorset and Middlesex; Sir rest assured of my fond regard at this time and ever, that you shall never lose the esteem in which I hold you, the events of the near past notwithstanding. It is commonly said of you that you are in possession of as much wit as my self yet shewing more of thought and principle. The past days have shewn this to be true and thus now my sorrow and lack…”

Jack tore his gaze away. The private and intimate tone of the missive was unmistakable What made this letter germane to his thesis? He skimmed through it, and found nothing that pertained to economics in any way. But the import was blazingly clear; John Wilmot, second Earl of Rochester, was apologizing to Charles Sackville for a lover’s quarrel.

-Make me live again, Jack- Jack pulled off his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. He rested his hands on the edge of the table, and watched the fingers tremble. There were- he’d been told- two monographs. Yet three came to him via special inter-department cooperative policies, by agency of a cheerful and kind woman with a rolling cart.

He performed, once again, the ceremony that moved ancient and fragile substances from one place to another without mishap. The third letter was from Wilmot as well, and was very clearly the one that was important to him;

“To Her Grace Elisabeth Mallet at Rochester; My wife, the bearer of this letter one Rchrd Bagley brings you coin in the sum of 200 shillings and 7 that you may replenish the coffers which your husband so witlessly has emptied, and if you find that ths man would be useful on the grounds, pray give him employ for he is recommended as a stout and steadfast man…
… These last days have seen an increase of mine own fortunes due to the previous impress of a small purse into the service of the ship Arielle the which hath returned to London Pool well laden, and thus the grateful return to you…

Jack made his notes. Once more, he marveled at the personality that sprang forth from these missives. Wilmot loved his wife tenderly, and his children the more. And this same domestic and practical person had written tearfully to another man…

The men of the age roistered and tupped as they pleased, and it was commonly assumed that men and women alike were the object of their lusts. Still, Rochester’s love life was well-documented; besides his wife, Elizabeth Mallet, the actress Elizabeth Barry had been his mistress, born him a daughter. No, surely not. Could he have have misread the meaning? He brought the page out a second time.

“… mine visions of the past May Revels cheer me again and anon as they I hope do you. The next occurrences will be as fruitful in merrimnt only should you and I be there together…”

Jack rolled his eyes.

“… and in future years as we have in these times together lived,
yrs sir, Rochester”

And once more, Jack felt his breath knocked out of him. “Make you live again, John?” he said aloud, and felt the hairs on his arms stand up.

Tags: geekery, language, Mad Moll