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quigonejinnApologies for trampling on the timeline of the peace of Lieutenant Hornblower, general notions of weather, basic geography, naval tradition, and common sense, as well as a lovely fic of the same name by a friend of mine. And yeah. The first dozen fics or so of mine in a fandom are always kind of rough and overstuffed.
The first time did not, in fact, happen in Kingston.
Kingston, after all, had been a good time, a happy time -- two hard days and two harder nights in the greatest English port city in the West Indies, and Bush spent the equivalent of nine months pay in somewhat less than seventy two hours. He had been trapped in port, away from the sea, for weeks. He had survived the ministrations of Dr. Clive and Dr. Sankey, as well as a formal board of inquiry, and he felt, on a level that he could barely recognize, let alone articulate, the need to celebrate, so he gleefully drank a quarter of his prize money, fucked half of it, and lost the remainder at the game tables.
The last morning of the leave, Bush woke on the floor of a brothel house. He was fully dressed; his hat was set on the floor next to him, but he didn't think he would ever be able to fit it on his aching head again, and when he looked up to see who was laughing so loudly at him, he found Horatio grinning down at him, holding the very end of one of his ridiculous guinea cigars, looking every inch the commander while wearing only his white shirt.
...
The first time had, instead, come during difficult times. Bush was in Portsmouth to draw his half-pay; he was staying with Horatio in Mrs. Mason's attic, and they were sitting on Horatio's bed 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. There was no reason, after all, for them to be talking for so long -- there was no ship's business to talk about, precious little news about the war, and they had already covered the sum of their combined knowledge in the first two hours after Bush had received his pay. Talking about the sea was certainly pleasurable, but after a particular point, discussing about storms they had seen or novel problems of sail they had pondered was like picking at a sore tooth or a half-healed wound. With the situation that they were both in, it was painful to think of being at sea.
Bush did not want to go back to his bed on the other side of the room. Horatio did not want him to go. They were Navy officers without either ships or war, and to save himself from having to leave, as much to give himself an excuse to stay close as out of real physical desire, Bush leaned forward and stroked the side of Horatio's neck.
He had not meant to touch Horatio like he would a woman, but it happened. It was the gentlest way that he knew to touch someone, and after it, Horatio was on him, teeth and teeth and body against body and the cot rattling and thumping so loud that they had to take it to the floor.
The candle was almost entirely gone by that point. It went out at some point afterwards; Bush could not remember when, precisely, because after they were on the floor Horatio leaned back to strip off his nightshirt, and Bush followed him up so they were kneeling in front of each other on the floor. Bush remembered groping his way to Hornblower in the darkness, orienting himself by finding collarbone, armpit, and rib, and then laying himself against Horatio in the darkness.
It felt strange to be with someone taller than he was; Horatio's mouth was hot and soft where there were no teeth, and there was also strange pleasure in running his hand over Hornblower's back and feeling soft hair that curled as easily as a girl's lying on top of the skin, stuck to it sweat, and then to feel hard muscle and harder bone underneath. Scars. Spine. It was like feeling your way up some small, particularly intimate bit of rigging, and it was strange, too, to be with another person and finish because of a hand.
No softness, very little heat, mostly pressure and this low sound that Bush had first heard when he was on the deck of Renown and Horatio was snarling with impatience over a matter of rigging.
There was no war, Bush told himself as he came with bone-rattling suddenness. They were not at sea. That was the point. There had been no sodomy, and it had only been a candle.
...
In what would have been the second time, they were preparing to round the Cape of Good Hope. The storms lay ahead; Bush had been overseeing the last of the preparations, and making one last reading of the quarterbill assignments. Now, he was having a last meal before the dirty weather -- if the food wasn't quite hot, at least it was warmish, better than wardroom food, since the captain's range was the last cooking fire to be put out on the ship.
The steward had cleared away the plates, and it was time for Bush to be going back to his hammock to snatch some sleep before he would be needed again. There also was no imminent action facing them, no battles to be fought, no frigates to cut out, so Horatio was not in one of his moods where he was willing to ask for company. There really was no reason for Bush to be there, in fact; Horatio had been, despite the invitation, silent throughout the meal.
Thinking, Bush expected. It was the mark of a man bound for the Admiralty. For greatness.
He pushed his chair back to show Horatio that he was ready to leave when his captain wanted him too. He half-rose, too, and then, all of a sudden, Horatio reached forward, almost double, turned the hand that Bush had on the table palm up, and kissed it.
There was no symbolism in it as it was the palm and not the back of the hand. Bush would not have recognized it anyways -- it was a captain with gold on his shoulders, after all, and even beyond that, it was Horatio. There would never be a question of it.
Nevertheless, he froze where he was, half-standing, half-sitting. Now, Horatio had taken Bush's second finger into his mouth. His tongue slid over the calluses and found the skin that was still sensitive in between the calluses. Pressed itself there, turned Bush's palm around so that the other fingers spanned his cheek, and now, he was nipping at the skin between thumb and pointing finger. Bush had the vague impression that he was biting his own lip, and now, Horatio was taking the knuckle of Bush's thumb into his mouth. He was holding it with his teeth while he worked tongue against it, and when Horatio looked up through the fingers that Bush had lying against his cheek and his brow, Bush finally came undone.
There was the long nose and the brown eyes. 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. Worry. A little fear. Terrible worry, terrible strain. Horatio had not told Bush where exactly the Admiralty ordered them, but he had let slip that they were not to come within sight of land after clearing the Cape until they had crossed the entirety of the Atlantic. It would be dead reckoning for more than two thousand miles, and Horatio's cheek was smoother than that of a captain about to round the Cape of Storms should be.
Hornblower's mouth had been so warm, too -- the heat had travelled straight up Bush's arm, into his cheeks. It had to be why his own cheeks were so hot. He was burning under his uniform, in fact, and that look, that slip just now. It had never been a question of forgiving Horatio for the tantrums. The thought had never entered his head as being necesary, and now, God help him, Horatio had lifted up the sleeve and the slight fringe of lace and was kissing his wrist. No tongue, but those lips were damp from before, and the laws of the Admiralty and the laws of God notwithstanding, Bush would have let his captain take him where he stood.
Over the dinner table. Against the stern windows if he'd wanted, so long as it was his captain.
It would likely have happened, too, if the steward hadn't chosen that minute to slip in with the last hot water on board for when the captain should go to bed.
...
Bush was not close to either his sisters or his mother. They drew half his pay but only an infinitesmal portion of his heart -- he began working days and sleeping nights at a blacksmith uncle's at eleven, left Chichester as a midshipman when he was fifteen, and had not returned at all until he was a lieutenant at twenty-three. The time at the blacksmith uncle's was how he acquired the base for the calluses that Hornblower admired every now and then; the time away in general was why he slept twelve hours a night and weeded the garden, as far away from the house and their chattering and doting as possible, a month after a black frost.
When Bush saw trees, he wondered whether they would make spars. When he saw wheels, he expected them to guide the course of ships. 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.
Maria reminded him of his second sister. Her mother looked much like the second wife of his blacksmith uncle.
Lady Barbara, on the other hand, was almost beautiful. She was like Hornblower in that way.
...
When it finally did happen, Hornblower was still a captain. He had not yet received his promotion to commodore, but was in Sheerness on some pretext or the other -- he needed new uniforms or something of the sort, but even Bush could see that it was a pretext.
Horatio had never been particularly good at lying, after all, and he seemed physically disturbed by the fact of walking through Sheerness out of his uniform. Blue and gold everywhere, black at the throat, a splash of white at the breast, and the clatter of swords against officer legs. Navy on shore might have been on half-pay. The Navy at Sheerness was only a shadow of Portsmouth or the great dockyards, but it was nevertheles a Navy town, and when they had walked back from the office where Bush worked and the door of Bush's room was shut behind them, Horatio leaned close, and he touched the side of Bush's neck at the spot where the neckcloth ended, barely on the skin and just next to where a little white from the shirt underneath showed.
It was a strange moment. Bush had done something like that all those years ago when they had been half-pay lieutenants in Mrs. Mason's attic. Less delicacy because he did not have Horatio's long, elegant fingers, because he had never been married and had not touched a woman he had not paid beforehand in almost twenty years, but Horatio was so close now. Bush knew that there was plenty of space behind him. If he wanted, he could take a step backwards. Horatio could, even though he had always been the more slovenly dresser, pretend that he had just been straightening some item of Bush's dress, and they could get to talking about some of the sails that they could see in the windows or the noisiness of the street or anything, really.
They were old enough friends for that.
Even when at sea, Hornblower had been terrible about his uniform. Bush remembered his first impression of Hornblower while coming aboard the Renown: he thought that the welcoming lieutenant looked like he had put his clothes on in the dark, and perhaps Horatio now thought that this was how one started to have sex with Bush. By touching some part of his uniform. That this was how one courted William Bush.
Bush wished it were dark now so that he could pretend that was why he stepped forward, balanced on that stump leg a little, and he kissed Horatio.
...
There were, in Bush's lodgings, a table, two chairs, a bed, and a chest. Horatio's coat lay across one chair. Bush sat in the other; his coat and hat were on the chest. On the table, there was now a bottle of oil that Bush had gone out and bought from the apothecary -- it was quite likely scented, but he had been shaking too hard, had been too nervous to take proper note about it, and could only hope that it wasn't something embarrassing -- and there was a bottle of rum, two glasses, a pack of sugar, some lemon. A kettle of water for the rum.
Hornblower had not brought Brown, and they had also walked from the Naval offices back to Bush's lodgings, so there was no carriage idling tied up outside the boarding house. Bush was inexpressibly glad for this -- they were captain and captain, equals in rank, but Horatio was going to be raised to be a commodore or even higher soon. He was a Colonel of the Marines, a Knight of the Order of Bath, and a lump formed in Bush's throat as he watched Horatio strip off his shirt and stand there in breeches and stockings for a moment, then look up and try to hide his uncertainty about how to go on from there.
He was awkward about undressing -- perhaps it was because he had gotten used to having someone help him dress and undress, but perhaps not. His skin was still brown from the days drifting down the Loire, and Bush could remember lying on the grass in the mornings. Dew would be heavy on the tarp overhead, and Brown would be snoring on one side of him and Horatio would be lying on the other.
There would be the noise of the countryside around them. The sound of the river close by, perhaps the smell of their nighttime fire still on the air, and the birds starting in the distance. It was almost like being a boy back in the cottage again, and whenever he dared, Bush would sneak an arm underneath Hornblower's head so that his captain would not have to sleep entirely on the ground.
On those occaisions, Horatio would turn towards him as easily as a ship turning under wind, as easily as a child, Bush imagined, turned toward its mother. Horatio's hair tickling his jaw, the shape of Horatio's cheekbone and the weight of his head. The memory of that mouth, soft as a girl's, and as full of teeth as a wolf's. It felt almost sacrilegious to hold one's captain that way, but Horatio had never said anything, and now, in England and less than hour before, Horatio had asked, in his offhand way, while they were wrestling each other about the bed, if Bush had ever wanted to have him. And had awkwardly squirmed some and put Bush's arm around his waist so that Bush's fingers lay against his backside.
Bush had almost fallen off the bed.
In turn, Hornblower had turned red, sat up, and started to gather his things. Bush stood rooted, a few feet away as Horatio got his hat out from under the bed. He had flushed dark red, in fact, and was trying to keep his face from Bush as he looked for his hair-tie.
The chance would likely never come again. Horatio would be a commodore soon, an admiral after that, and only God knew what once he decided to take down his flag. He was married to a Wellesley, a Knight of the Order of the Bath, soon to be owner of a village named, if Bush remembered correctly, Smallbridge.
Somehow, the words got themselves out of Bush's throat. He had to go out and get a few things, but he would be back.
Horatio froze, looked up. His face had gone pale. Perhaps he was going to take it back now; he had been struggling with something on his shoes. Perhaps he had not meant it all along, and he would say that it had been a joke, but he did not, and after a moment where neither of them said anything or moved, Bush jammed his hat on his head and took his coat and left.
The oil on the table was for Horatio. The rum was for Bush himself. He remembered that, even as a lieutenant, Horatio had never been particularly fond of his spirit ration -- his captain, his beloved odd captain who would soon be a commodore and an admiral after that and who knew what and where after that.
Bush swallowed the rest of his rum, then stood and went over to him.
...
Two months later, notice came that Bush was to have command of the seventy-four Nonsuch bound for the Baltic, and Bush could not keep the smile off of his face when he saw his commodore climbing up the side of the ship. He tried to be solemn while he welcomed Horatio aboard and shook his hand, but he could not quite manage it, and seeing Horatio smile back at him made him feel as warm and strong as if he were twenty-three again and newly in possession of his commission.
Horatio never offered again, and they never spoke of what had happened. In fact, because of the exigencies of service and the necessary distance between a commodore and a post captain, from Portsmouth to Le Havre and until Caudebec, after that welcoming handshake, they barely touched.
...
Perhaps, in the end, it was only love as one friend felt for another, but in the end for Bush and for a long time for Horatio, there was so little love and so little that was purely good in the rest of their lives that it did not matter.
And I think I finally figured out why I love a freaking Linkin Park Horatio Hornblower vid I mean, sure, it's Linkin Park, and sure it's NUMB of all songs by them, but the brilliant editing of the video presents a version of Bush and Horatio that looks and feels and breathes very, very, very close to the book dynamic -- the tension that exists between Bush and Hornblower because they're friends in addition to being captain and first lieutenant. The difficulty that Horatio has keeping himself under control so that he doesn't take things out on Bush more than he does already. The fact that there are times when he has to hurt Bush's feelings in order to do his duty as a captain, the fact that Bush has a duty to remain Hornblower's "pillar of strength" as he was during Hornblower's wedding, where he was acting as a friend and not a subordinate, despite the hurt.
Horatio gets to turn his back to Bush and take a deep breath and clasp his hands to compose himself, but Bush, well. He only gets a moment to drop his eyes and master himself. He has to follow where Horatio leads. And Horatio not only knows it, but he also demands it.
Their relationship is an immensely complicated mess of duty and affection and sacrifice in the books. It's not captured in fic very much, but the video nails it. It even answers, in a way, the question of why Bush and Hornblower stick together despite the difficulties -- I mean, it's not that there's lack of real affection underneath, but it's incredibly hard to have a change a friendship that started out as Bush and Horblower's did, as lieutenants and co-conspirators and mutual survivors.
There are times when you're reading the books, and you just wonder why in God's name they even try to be friends if Horatio keeps snarling at Bush like that and if Bush keeps exposing (at least in Hornblower's head) his commanding officer's vulnerabilities. Horatio and Bush are tough men, and yeah, you can say that the affection betwene them is strong enough to keep them together, but I wonder, and the vid ends with a beautiful shot of their ship sailing into the snow andthe coulds.
The only thing in sight is the ship. The only thing that really looks as though it's movingon the ship is the British flag, and the answer that springis pretty clear: duty and terrible loneliness.
... of course, I'm pretty sure that if![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
black_hound ever reads this post, she's going to be like, "WTFever, you dumb bitch. :D."
The first time did not, in fact, happen in Kingston.
Kingston, after all, had been a good time, a happy time -- two hard days and two harder nights in the greatest English port city in the West Indies, and Bush spent the equivalent of nine months pay in somewhat less than seventy two hours. He had been trapped in port, away from the sea, for weeks. He had survived the ministrations of Dr. Clive and Dr. Sankey, as well as a formal board of inquiry, and he felt, on a level that he could barely recognize, let alone articulate, the need to celebrate, so he gleefully drank a quarter of his prize money, fucked half of it, and lost the remainder at the game tables.
The last morning of the leave, Bush woke on the floor of a brothel house. He was fully dressed; his hat was set on the floor next to him, but he didn't think he would ever be able to fit it on his aching head again, and when he looked up to see who was laughing so loudly at him, he found Horatio grinning down at him, holding the very end of one of his ridiculous guinea cigars, looking every inch the commander while wearing only his white shirt.
...
The first time had, instead, come during difficult times. Bush was in Portsmouth to draw his half-pay; he was staying with Horatio in Mrs. Mason's attic, and they were sitting on Horatio's bed 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. There was no reason, after all, for them to be talking for so long -- there was no ship's business to talk about, precious little news about the war, and they had already covered the sum of their combined knowledge in the first two hours after Bush had received his pay. Talking about the sea was certainly pleasurable, but after a particular point, discussing about storms they had seen or novel problems of sail they had pondered was like picking at a sore tooth or a half-healed wound. With the situation that they were both in, it was painful to think of being at sea.
Bush did not want to go back to his bed on the other side of the room. Horatio did not want him to go. They were Navy officers without either ships or war, and to save himself from having to leave, as much to give himself an excuse to stay close as out of real physical desire, Bush leaned forward and stroked the side of Horatio's neck.
He had not meant to touch Horatio like he would a woman, but it happened. It was the gentlest way that he knew to touch someone, and after it, Horatio was on him, teeth and teeth and body against body and the cot rattling and thumping so loud that they had to take it to the floor.
The candle was almost entirely gone by that point. It went out at some point afterwards; Bush could not remember when, precisely, because after they were on the floor Horatio leaned back to strip off his nightshirt, and Bush followed him up so they were kneeling in front of each other on the floor. Bush remembered groping his way to Hornblower in the darkness, orienting himself by finding collarbone, armpit, and rib, and then laying himself against Horatio in the darkness.
It felt strange to be with someone taller than he was; Horatio's mouth was hot and soft where there were no teeth, and there was also strange pleasure in running his hand over Hornblower's back and feeling soft hair that curled as easily as a girl's lying on top of the skin, stuck to it sweat, and then to feel hard muscle and harder bone underneath. Scars. Spine. It was like feeling your way up some small, particularly intimate bit of rigging, and it was strange, too, to be with another person and finish because of a hand.
No softness, very little heat, mostly pressure and this low sound that Bush had first heard when he was on the deck of Renown and Horatio was snarling with impatience over a matter of rigging.
There was no war, Bush told himself as he came with bone-rattling suddenness. They were not at sea. That was the point. There had been no sodomy, and it had only been a candle.
...
In what would have been the second time, they were preparing to round the Cape of Good Hope. The storms lay ahead; Bush had been overseeing the last of the preparations, and making one last reading of the quarterbill assignments. Now, he was having a last meal before the dirty weather -- if the food wasn't quite hot, at least it was warmish, better than wardroom food, since the captain's range was the last cooking fire to be put out on the ship.
The steward had cleared away the plates, and it was time for Bush to be going back to his hammock to snatch some sleep before he would be needed again. There also was no imminent action facing them, no battles to be fought, no frigates to cut out, so Horatio was not in one of his moods where he was willing to ask for company. There really was no reason for Bush to be there, in fact; Horatio had been, despite the invitation, silent throughout the meal.
Thinking, Bush expected. It was the mark of a man bound for the Admiralty. For greatness.
He pushed his chair back to show Horatio that he was ready to leave when his captain wanted him too. He half-rose, too, and then, all of a sudden, Horatio reached forward, almost double, turned the hand that Bush had on the table palm up, and kissed it.
There was no symbolism in it as it was the palm and not the back of the hand. Bush would not have recognized it anyways -- it was a captain with gold on his shoulders, after all, and even beyond that, it was Horatio. There would never be a question of it.
Nevertheless, he froze where he was, half-standing, half-sitting. Now, Horatio had taken Bush's second finger into his mouth. His tongue slid over the calluses and found the skin that was still sensitive in between the calluses. Pressed itself there, turned Bush's palm around so that the other fingers spanned his cheek, and now, he was nipping at the skin between thumb and pointing finger. Bush had the vague impression that he was biting his own lip, and now, Horatio was taking the knuckle of Bush's thumb into his mouth. He was holding it with his teeth while he worked tongue against it, and when Horatio looked up through the fingers that Bush had lying against his cheek and his brow, Bush finally came undone.
There was the long nose and the brown eyes. 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. Worry. A little fear. Terrible worry, terrible strain. Horatio had not told Bush where exactly the Admiralty ordered them, but he had let slip that they were not to come within sight of land after clearing the Cape until they had crossed the entirety of the Atlantic. It would be dead reckoning for more than two thousand miles, and Horatio's cheek was smoother than that of a captain about to round the Cape of Storms should be.
Hornblower's mouth had been so warm, too -- the heat had travelled straight up Bush's arm, into his cheeks. It had to be why his own cheeks were so hot. He was burning under his uniform, in fact, and that look, that slip just now. It had never been a question of forgiving Horatio for the tantrums. The thought had never entered his head as being necesary, and now, God help him, Horatio had lifted up the sleeve and the slight fringe of lace and was kissing his wrist. No tongue, but those lips were damp from before, and the laws of the Admiralty and the laws of God notwithstanding, Bush would have let his captain take him where he stood.
Over the dinner table. Against the stern windows if he'd wanted, so long as it was his captain.
It would likely have happened, too, if the steward hadn't chosen that minute to slip in with the last hot water on board for when the captain should go to bed.
...
Bush was not close to either his sisters or his mother. They drew half his pay but only an infinitesmal portion of his heart -- he began working days and sleeping nights at a blacksmith uncle's at eleven, left Chichester as a midshipman when he was fifteen, and had not returned at all until he was a lieutenant at twenty-three. The time at the blacksmith uncle's was how he acquired the base for the calluses that Hornblower admired every now and then; the time away in general was why he slept twelve hours a night and weeded the garden, as far away from the house and their chattering and doting as possible, a month after a black frost.
When Bush saw trees, he wondered whether they would make spars. When he saw wheels, he expected them to guide the course of ships. 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.
Maria reminded him of his second sister. Her mother looked much like the second wife of his blacksmith uncle.
Lady Barbara, on the other hand, was almost beautiful. She was like Hornblower in that way.
...
When it finally did happen, Hornblower was still a captain. He had not yet received his promotion to commodore, but was in Sheerness on some pretext or the other -- he needed new uniforms or something of the sort, but even Bush could see that it was a pretext.
Horatio had never been particularly good at lying, after all, and he seemed physically disturbed by the fact of walking through Sheerness out of his uniform. Blue and gold everywhere, black at the throat, a splash of white at the breast, and the clatter of swords against officer legs. Navy on shore might have been on half-pay. The Navy at Sheerness was only a shadow of Portsmouth or the great dockyards, but it was nevertheles a Navy town, and when they had walked back from the office where Bush worked and the door of Bush's room was shut behind them, Horatio leaned close, and he touched the side of Bush's neck at the spot where the neckcloth ended, barely on the skin and just next to where a little white from the shirt underneath showed.
It was a strange moment. Bush had done something like that all those years ago when they had been half-pay lieutenants in Mrs. Mason's attic. Less delicacy because he did not have Horatio's long, elegant fingers, because he had never been married and had not touched a woman he had not paid beforehand in almost twenty years, but Horatio was so close now. Bush knew that there was plenty of space behind him. If he wanted, he could take a step backwards. Horatio could, even though he had always been the more slovenly dresser, pretend that he had just been straightening some item of Bush's dress, and they could get to talking about some of the sails that they could see in the windows or the noisiness of the street or anything, really.
They were old enough friends for that.
Even when at sea, Hornblower had been terrible about his uniform. Bush remembered his first impression of Hornblower while coming aboard the Renown: he thought that the welcoming lieutenant looked like he had put his clothes on in the dark, and perhaps Horatio now thought that this was how one started to have sex with Bush. By touching some part of his uniform. That this was how one courted William Bush.
Bush wished it were dark now so that he could pretend that was why he stepped forward, balanced on that stump leg a little, and he kissed Horatio.
...
There were, in Bush's lodgings, a table, two chairs, a bed, and a chest. Horatio's coat lay across one chair. Bush sat in the other; his coat and hat were on the chest. On the table, there was now a bottle of oil that Bush had gone out and bought from the apothecary -- it was quite likely scented, but he had been shaking too hard, had been too nervous to take proper note about it, and could only hope that it wasn't something embarrassing -- and there was a bottle of rum, two glasses, a pack of sugar, some lemon. A kettle of water for the rum.
Hornblower had not brought Brown, and they had also walked from the Naval offices back to Bush's lodgings, so there was no carriage idling tied up outside the boarding house. Bush was inexpressibly glad for this -- they were captain and captain, equals in rank, but Horatio was going to be raised to be a commodore or even higher soon. He was a Colonel of the Marines, a Knight of the Order of Bath, and a lump formed in Bush's throat as he watched Horatio strip off his shirt and stand there in breeches and stockings for a moment, then look up and try to hide his uncertainty about how to go on from there.
He was awkward about undressing -- perhaps it was because he had gotten used to having someone help him dress and undress, but perhaps not. His skin was still brown from the days drifting down the Loire, and Bush could remember lying on the grass in the mornings. Dew would be heavy on the tarp overhead, and Brown would be snoring on one side of him and Horatio would be lying on the other.
There would be the noise of the countryside around them. The sound of the river close by, perhaps the smell of their nighttime fire still on the air, and the birds starting in the distance. It was almost like being a boy back in the cottage again, and whenever he dared, Bush would sneak an arm underneath Hornblower's head so that his captain would not have to sleep entirely on the ground.
On those occaisions, Horatio would turn towards him as easily as a ship turning under wind, as easily as a child, Bush imagined, turned toward its mother. Horatio's hair tickling his jaw, the shape of Horatio's cheekbone and the weight of his head. The memory of that mouth, soft as a girl's, and as full of teeth as a wolf's. It felt almost sacrilegious to hold one's captain that way, but Horatio had never said anything, and now, in England and less than hour before, Horatio had asked, in his offhand way, while they were wrestling each other about the bed, if Bush had ever wanted to have him. And had awkwardly squirmed some and put Bush's arm around his waist so that Bush's fingers lay against his backside.
Bush had almost fallen off the bed.
In turn, Hornblower had turned red, sat up, and started to gather his things. Bush stood rooted, a few feet away as Horatio got his hat out from under the bed. He had flushed dark red, in fact, and was trying to keep his face from Bush as he looked for his hair-tie.
The chance would likely never come again. Horatio would be a commodore soon, an admiral after that, and only God knew what once he decided to take down his flag. He was married to a Wellesley, a Knight of the Order of the Bath, soon to be owner of a village named, if Bush remembered correctly, Smallbridge.
Somehow, the words got themselves out of Bush's throat. He had to go out and get a few things, but he would be back.
Horatio froze, looked up. His face had gone pale. Perhaps he was going to take it back now; he had been struggling with something on his shoes. Perhaps he had not meant it all along, and he would say that it had been a joke, but he did not, and after a moment where neither of them said anything or moved, Bush jammed his hat on his head and took his coat and left.
The oil on the table was for Horatio. The rum was for Bush himself. He remembered that, even as a lieutenant, Horatio had never been particularly fond of his spirit ration -- his captain, his beloved odd captain who would soon be a commodore and an admiral after that and who knew what and where after that.
Bush swallowed the rest of his rum, then stood and went over to him.
...
Two months later, notice came that Bush was to have command of the seventy-four Nonsuch bound for the Baltic, and Bush could not keep the smile off of his face when he saw his commodore climbing up the side of the ship. He tried to be solemn while he welcomed Horatio aboard and shook his hand, but he could not quite manage it, and seeing Horatio smile back at him made him feel as warm and strong as if he were twenty-three again and newly in possession of his commission.
Horatio never offered again, and they never spoke of what had happened. In fact, because of the exigencies of service and the necessary distance between a commodore and a post captain, from Portsmouth to Le Havre and until Caudebec, after that welcoming handshake, they barely touched.
...
Perhaps, in the end, it was only love as one friend felt for another, but in the end for Bush and for a long time for Horatio, there was so little love and so little that was purely good in the rest of their lives that it did not matter.
And I think I finally figured out why I love a freaking Linkin Park Horatio Hornblower vid I mean, sure, it's Linkin Park, and sure it's NUMB of all songs by them, but the brilliant editing of the video presents a version of Bush and Horatio that looks and feels and breathes very, very, very close to the book dynamic -- the tension that exists between Bush and Hornblower because they're friends in addition to being captain and first lieutenant. The difficulty that Horatio has keeping himself under control so that he doesn't take things out on Bush more than he does already. The fact that there are times when he has to hurt Bush's feelings in order to do his duty as a captain, the fact that Bush has a duty to remain Hornblower's "pillar of strength" as he was during Hornblower's wedding, where he was acting as a friend and not a subordinate, despite the hurt.
Horatio gets to turn his back to Bush and take a deep breath and clasp his hands to compose himself, but Bush, well. He only gets a moment to drop his eyes and master himself. He has to follow where Horatio leads. And Horatio not only knows it, but he also demands it.
Their relationship is an immensely complicated mess of duty and affection and sacrifice in the books. It's not captured in fic very much, but the video nails it. It even answers, in a way, the question of why Bush and Hornblower stick together despite the difficulties -- I mean, it's not that there's lack of real affection underneath, but it's incredibly hard to have a change a friendship that started out as Bush and Horblower's did, as lieutenants and co-conspirators and mutual survivors.
There are times when you're reading the books, and you just wonder why in God's name they even try to be friends if Horatio keeps snarling at Bush like that and if Bush keeps exposing (at least in Hornblower's head) his commanding officer's vulnerabilities. Horatio and Bush are tough men, and yeah, you can say that the affection betwene them is strong enough to keep them together, but I wonder, and the vid ends with a beautiful shot of their ship sailing into the snow andthe coulds.
The only thing in sight is the ship. The only thing that really looks as though it's movingon the ship is the British flag, and the answer that springis pretty clear: duty and terrible loneliness.
... of course, I'm pretty sure that if
black_hound ever reads this post, she's going to be like, "WTFever, you dumb bitch. :D."
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Re: Undertow (HH)
Date: 2006-01-13 09:07 pm (UTC)The story was locked to private, actually, right around the time that I friended you and you friended me back -- I'd been having fits for a while about whether this fic was any good or not, and your Hornblower writing is some of my favorite fandom writing in recent memory, so I was terrified that you would read this and think I was a COMPLETE MORON who MUTILATED SOME OF YOUR FAVORITE CHARACTERS and that I needed to be KEPT OUT OF YOUR FANDOM BY VIOLENT MEANS IF NECESSARY.
And I'm glad the rules had a good effect. I always worry that if I post them public, people will take them the wrong way, but yeah. Bush/Hornblower is such a soppy sentimental favorite of mine that if I didn't have a set of personal commandments, I'd end up writing about Bush getting up to sing "The Wind Beneath My Wings" at a cabaret club and dedicating this very special tune to a very special captain.
Thanks so much for the lovely comment. *_*
Re: Undertow (HH)
Date: 2006-01-13 10:02 pm (UTC)I always worry that if I post them public, people will take them the wrong way, but yeah.
They were a bit cheeky *g*--but I do believe that, on entering a new fandom, identifying the things that don't work for you in its body of fanfic is a necessary first step in coming up with stories that are truly original and personal. Facing fanfic cliches head-on and working to subvert them can be a very fruitful creative approach, and I look forward to more of it from you.
~
Re: Undertow (HH)
Date: 2006-01-14 04:37 am (UTC)Thanks again for all the kindness. I'll definitely try to keep a better handle on my OMFG THIS SUCKS THIS SUCKS THIS SUCKS DELETE trigger. <3
Re: Undertow (HH)
Date: 2006-01-14 04:48 am (UTC)No, trust me, we've HAD those. You are not it.
You were extremely clear that those were the rules you thought were good for you.
Me, I break some of them, agree with others, and have a bunch you don't.
Makes for a wider variety of good fic, and this can only be of the good.
Since in fact, as you may have noticed, there really is only one hard-and-fast HH fandom rule: thou shalt keep BH happy so she will draw us porn. :)
aye aye, sir. :D
Date: 2006-01-14 04:52 am (UTC)Re: aye aye, sir. :D
Date: 2006-01-14 04:59 am (UTC)Some of them are in various fic commentaries we've done, and there were threads of character-geeking for Bush, Archie, and Edrington over in xxix, but there's no list as such.
Maybe we ought to start some threads in the various character comms...
Re: aye aye, sir. :D
Date: 2006-01-14 08:52 pm (UTC)You know, I'm always so impressed with people who are able to come up with such specific things about characters. I mean, I think I spend as much time obsessively speculating about Bush as anybody, but I swear to God that I couldn't come up with his preferred drink of source or the names of his sisters or anything nearly so clear and vivid.
"Uhhhhhhh. Rum like he's drinking in that one book when he shows up to tell Horatio about the treasure fleet? Whatever his superior officer is, um, drinking? And um. Uh. I bet his sisters have girl names! ENGLISH GIRL NAMES! YEAH!"
Re: aye aye, sir. :D
Date: 2006-01-14 10:01 pm (UTC):)
Re: aye aye, sir. :D
Date: 2006-01-14 10:50 pm (UTC)But uh. *friends back gleefully*
Re: aye aye, sir. :D
Date: 2006-01-14 11:46 pm (UTC)Also, Rule duly posted for consideration
Re: aye aye, sir. :D
Date: 2006-01-14 05:23 am (UTC)