#honestly tfw disc inspired me with their love of these gay old men wow...

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merle hasn’t heard from much of ipre lately, but he’s never without davenport for too long (aka, merle doesn’t know how to use his fantasy phone) 

read on ao3

“So,” Davenport asks on his fifteenth of what’s been lately becoming weekly beachside visits, over a year after Story and Song and a month after Carey and Killian’s wedding. “How are the… er, horny boys these days?”

Merle pauses in the motion of sipping the herbal tea that he knows Davenport loves best (but only when he grows it himself) and tilts his head a little bit. “Whattaya mean?”

Davenport shrugs. “It’s kinda silly, but I never thought any of us could get any… closer, after a century.” He pauses here, for a short while (and actually, this is one of those hints to Merle that he isn’t the only one who changed in their long, long final cycle before the hunger arrived. Captain Davenport was always a carefully eloquent man, and he would take the time he needed to perfectly articulate what he wanted to say. Davenport now is hastier. Thoughtful wording forsaken in the reveling of speaking at all; as if he’s scared he stops for too long, he won’t be able to answer again. Merle was always a patient man, especially for his captain. He doesn’t need to be anymore. In fact, he’s only just worked through this thought to heartbreak by the time the pause is over). “But the three of you… Merle, Taako and Magnus have always loved you, but they love you.”

It’s Merle’s turn to be hasty with his words, now. “I’m already taken by a dashing sea captain. Besides, I’m too old for them.”

Davenport laughs, eyes crinkling at the edges and head bowing every so slightly as a light blush dusts just over his mustache with only the brilliant white of his smile to break up the red (and wow, Pan help him, after all these years searching to figure out why he walked away from his wife, it only takes Davenport half a second to remind him what love really is). “Gross, Merle!”

Merle laughs too. The two of them- two old men on a boat in a world they never really belonged in but made home all the same- fill the small dock outside Earl Merle’s mansion with laughter like bells.

“Seriously, though!” Davenport tells him, elbowing him in the side when he regains his composure. “We were all so… Lost, during that time,” (and Merle knows him well enough to know that his love for his surrogate children and the fear of losing himself again are waging war in his reclaimed mind in a series of phrases- You’re Merle, right?  I’m Davenport. Lucretia, what did you do?) “but the three of you found each other and you rebuilt each other, even when everything was lost, even when you’d lost everything… You loved each other. You can’t possibly tell me you lost that. I don’t think you can.”

Merle sips his tea, long and slow (and can’t help but think the bond engine gave Davenport the ability to see into his deepest thoughts- the parts of him that are slow and considerate, the parts of him that aren’t the Peacemaker, the effort to make his friends laugh and lighten the weight of a century of loss and hard choices but instead the wise and wistful old man that hides behind a wit to rival Taako’s but honed with humility to undercut it) and for once, makes an effort to verbalize what he’s thinking. “You know I love them all, Dav. I couldn’t not. We both know well enough that Mavis isn’t my oldest, but… Well. Taako’s finally whole. Magnus has learned to hold back and wait. They don’t need an old man like me anymore.”

Davenport says nothing (and even if the lessons Davenport learned during the last decade will never outweigh what he’s suffered in turn, Merle realizes that they ran parallel in that time- he learned that he could be selfish, that he could turn away from being the Peacemaker; Davenport learned to express how he feels, allowing the carefully tailored persona he was when he fought to be the daring leader IPRE needed to fall away, when he was forced to become the Wordless One and Merle can almost trick himself into believing that seeing the love and hurt he feels on his face, shared openly without hesitation, is worth it all) but he puts a hand on Merle’s shoulder and pulls him closer.

“You old fuck!” A shrill shout rings out from behind them.

The two turn around and gape at the helm of the ship where a tear is torn in reality. Through it, Taako and Magnus burst out, both seemingly enraged, while a sheepish Barry tails them and closes the rift he’d opened with his scythe. “Sorry! Sorry, I tried to stop them, but-” Barry calls to them.

Davenport blinks. “I always forget Barry’s a reaper. Every time,” he admits, not bothering to move from the relaxed position he’d taken at Merle’s side after he realized who the intruders were.

Taako and Magnus are on Merle in seconds. Taako’s hands are stretched wide and his fingers are poised to emphasize what he says (a habit he’s gotten into from performing that he only reclaims when he’s pissed) while Magnus practically tackles Merle (and, alright, maybe he hasn’t forsaken rushing in completely).

“Hey!” Merle shouts as Magnus pulls his stone of farspeech out of his pocket. “What are ya doing?!”

Magnus throws the thing to Taako who, with a huff and a screech of “I fucking KNEW IT!”, twists the side of the stone until it clicks and pulses green once. “Merle fucking Highchurch!” Taako yells. “Do you know how many times we’ve fucking called you this year?”

Merle glances back at Davenport (and he takes it back- the story Davenport’s features wield is turning to “I told you so”) before glancing at the angry pair. “Um… Zero?”

Taako huffs “Unbelievable!” and throws Merle his stone. “You were on fucking fantasy do not disturb for over a year!”

Merle taps the stone, and sure enough, he has six hundred and thirty-nine missed calls. He blinks at it once, twice, three times. What?

“Old man, if this is your way of blowing us off, we’re not standing for it!” Magnus announces. “I will literally force Barry to move in with me at Raven’s Roost so I can make him teleport me to your beach mansion to yell at you when I need my old man fix!”

“Old man fix? Ew, Maggie,” Taako says, making a face.

“I’m not- I’m not gonna do that, Mags,” Barry tells him.

Magnus crosses his arms. “I will literally hold Barry J Blue- that’s J for Jorts- Bluejeans hostage and make him let me come annoy you daily. Is that what you want?”

“Cap’n’port, I’m begging you, make your husband answer his fucking stone,” Taako tells the hysterically laughing captain.

Davenport doesn’t answer, only shakes his head before putting it down on the table in front of him, his chest heaving with laughter.

“Wait- You two’ve been calling me?” Merle asks, dumbfounded.

“Yeah, fucking- Of course!”

“Hachi machi, Merle! Fucking yeah?!”

Barry shakes his head, too. “Literally everyone has been trying to call you. You literally were on a spaceship for a century, how- How is this beyond you? You’re a scientist, Merle,” he tells him, but suddenly he freezes up and his flesh melts away. “Shit that’s- That’s the ol’ goddess. Come on, Mags, Koko, you’re either staying here or we gotta go.”

“Merle, when this old man date is over, I’m gonna fucking call you because Istus fucking help me, but I love you and I need you to give me advice on how to raise my boy or I’m gonna fucking lose it,” Taako tells him, an angry finger pointing at him accusingly before crossing across the boat to step through the rift. He pauses, one foot in, to flip them both off. “I love you both, answer your fucking stones, and yeah, you too, Dav! I’m fucking onto that shit too!”

Magnus follows after them, shouting a “Stop being strangers!” behind him as they disappear.

“See you both soon, stay safe!” Barry says, waving as the rift closes behind him.

Davenport is still laughing hysterically and he doesn’t even bother picking his head up off the table. Instead, he tilts his head to stare at Merle and there are tears rolling down his face and dripping onto the table. “I cannot believe you!”

Merle finally laughs too, kissing Davenport’s cheek when he finally sits up from the table and when his stone of far speech shines a bright blue, Lucretia’s frequency, later that night, he answers right away.

(and ever since he left that beach, wondering what love was and why he could love those two children with his whole heart and still never love their mother enough to give them the home life they deserved, Merle has thought that he could pull away from his family and allow them to thrive in his absence. He could bear the heartache on his own, and they could let him slip from their thoughts. Over and over again, they show him, tell him, shout at him that he’s wrong, that it hurts them when he disappears.)

And after a long conversation with Lucretia and a promise to have another spa day some time soon, Merle switches his frequency to bright red and asks Davenport if there’s any chance he’d like to start docking his boat at the Bottlenose Cove a little more frequently.

He still laughs when Davenport asks him if that’s a euphemism.