I did a quick skim of recent posts in your journal when friending, but must have overlooked this one at the time, so it's via black_hound's rec on crack_van that I'm here.
I can see your personal HH fanfic commandments at work in this story, and I do like its resulting toughness: the way it contrasts moments of intense romanticism and longing with a harsher, more pragmatic overall context is very true-to-canon.
I very much enjoyed the language here as well, particularly:
he felt, on a level that he could barely recognize, let alone articulate, the need to celebrate
in the half dark of a candle burnt down to the nub. / There was an unspoken agreement that it would be undignified to go on talking after the candle went out.
It was like feeling your way up some small, particularly intimate bit of rigging
when Horatio looked up through the fingers that Bush had lying against his cheek and his brow, Bush finally came undone
The calm, diffident expression that Horatio only used when he was struggling with terrible emotion, and there, it slipped a little just now when Bush's finger touched his cheek [...] Horatio's cheek was smoother than that of a captain about to round the Cape of Storms should be
They drew half his pay but only an infinitesmal portion of his heart
The only time he ever really used the word beautiful was to describe a particularly well-built vessel -- or his ship, really, as any ship that he had put his sweat into, any ship that he had ridden out a storm with or had felt flying across the water, automatically became beautiful to him.
That last passage, especially, is lovely for what it says about Bush's relationship with Horatio.
Undertow (HH)
I can see your personal HH fanfic commandments at work in this story, and I do like its resulting toughness: the way it contrasts moments of intense romanticism and longing with a harsher, more pragmatic overall context is very true-to-canon.
I very much enjoyed the language here as well, particularly:
he felt, on a level that he could barely recognize, let alone articulate, the need to celebrate
in the half dark of a candle burnt down to the nub. / There was an unspoken agreement that it would be undignified to go on talking after the candle went out.
It was like feeling your way up some small, particularly intimate bit of rigging
when Horatio looked up through the fingers that Bush had lying against his cheek and his brow, Bush finally came undone
The calm, diffident expression that Horatio only used when he was struggling with terrible emotion, and there, it slipped a little just now when Bush's finger touched his cheek [...] Horatio's cheek was smoother than that of a captain about to round the Cape of Storms should be
They drew half his pay but only an infinitesmal portion of his heart
The only time he ever really used the word beautiful was to describe a particularly well-built vessel -- or his ship, really, as any ship that he had put his sweat into, any ship that he had ridden out a storm with or had felt flying across the water, automatically became beautiful to him.
That last passage, especially, is lovely for what it says about Bush's relationship with Horatio.
Thanks for writing!
~