"You are a bad man, Mr. Mercer," Cutler said in the barest of whispers, trembling with some great emotion. Mercer locked the door to the office, it was the first time he had been alone with the young master since his redemption. Cutler refused to look up at him, his eyes firmly focused on nothing somewhere in the space on the floor between them. Mercer leaned back against the locked door; his arms folded over his chest, and stalked Cutler Beckett with the long stare of his eyes from across the room. There was a tension in the young man's shoulders; he was a clock with its springs and gears aching to burst.
"I know you, Mr. Mercer. You are a very bad man," Cutler repeated the revelation to himself and it frightened him. The edge of Mercer's glamour had begun to fade, as does a mirage the closer one comes, and Cutler had seen startling glimpses of what seethed beneath. The facets of his interactions with this man had never been fully understood until now; to see the sinew of a wolf under sheep's skin made him question the reality of the universe, both material and immaterial. Cutler Beckett would never tell a soul what had happened to him, but he knew that Mercer knew the truth and could smell it on him.
"Why?" Cutler asked, a million questions in a single word: Why me, why him, why you? Why did you hold back, why did you come for me, why do you stay? "Why not?" Mr. Mercer asked back. A long time ago Cutler would have laughed at the clerk's impertinence. "That is not an answer to my question, Mr. Mercer," the young master attempted to imbue his voice with authority. He wanted to run, but there was no place to go. Cutler had to stand his ground as Mercer strode towards him slowly, inexorably. The lead in his belly held him in place and slicked his body in a cold sweat.
Mercer's open palm descended warm and firm on the back of Cutler's neck at the nape. The young body shuddered beneath his hand, a dead leaf clinging to a branch in a persistent wind. Cutler squeezed his eyes shut, he wanted to cry. "I could have, anytime I wanted to, and I did want to, all the time," Mr. Mercer whispered hotly directly into Cutler's ear. "Do you know why?" he squeezed his hand at the young master's nape, "You have lived such a soft life, I could see it in the nape of your neck. Such tenderness, I could have destroyed you…"
"No, you were afraid of my father-" "HA!" Mercer barked, interrupting the young master's easy, and incorrect, explanation. His other hand joined itself to Cutler's neck, around his throat, holding his head steady so that Mercer could whisper poison into his ear. "You are not a fool; do not act like one now. Your father holds nothing above me. He wields a soft, provincial fear suitable for the weak. I do not answer to him." Cutler flinched. There was a time he had been afraid of his own father, he wondered what Mr. Mercer would have thought of that.
"Are you angry then? Angry that you were – that you were – not the first to – to destroy me?" Cutler managed to choke the words out despite himself and he was barely holding back the tears at this almost admission. "Do not," Mercer hissed, "compare me to them. In your naïveté you think you are destroyed. Your eyes have been opened. The soft nape of your neck that filled your mother's heart with such tenderness when she beheld it belied what you are truly capable of and you see things now as they truly are; you see me. Destroying you would be a bitter waste…"
"Why then?" Cutler quailed softly as he had long ago reached the limits of his understanding. "Better to mold you, shape you, touch that steel in your spine and make you my own. Imbeciles without patience or discipline, who cannot even manage enough talent to hide themselves in the sheep of society, do not deserve to have you squirming like a worm under their boots." "Stop it," Cutler's stridulous voice sought to impede Mr. Mercer's stream of words. He did not know how much more he could take before he broke into parts that could not fit back together again.
"You are going to have to get over this; you will never succeed if you do not. You will not sulk, nor shrink, nor be timid. I will break you of these habits. Come out of your den, puppy, and let me lick your wounds," Mercer licked the faint ridge of a whip lash scar that peeked up from above his collar just below Cutler's ear. As Mr. Mercer peeled back the layers of clothing, Cutler did his best not to cry out in fear. Lips, tongue, and hot breath followed the scars down his shoulders, around his ribs, back down to his hips, and across his back.
Mr. Mercer licked every scar, kissed every burn, and spread hot breath over every inch of skin that had been beaten and bruised. He even licked Cutler there, between his cheeks, where he had bleed. The smell of rum and filth still made him gag and retch, even just to think of it, and here Mercer was licking him clean. Hot and wet, sliding his tongue against vulnerability that acutely remembered horrific abuse, Mercer pressed his tongue inside the young master. Licking the gravest of wounds from the inside out, Mr. Mercer encouraged Cutler Beckett as he wept.